The Miscalculations of Robot Electro Jones, Grown Up
by MozaWesterburg
Summary: Raising a rocker girl who called him 'dada' as a baby, a robot boy who's just like him (when he isn't invisible and avoiding bath time) and a shebot who's homecoming is a disaster after she was snatched away and reprogrammed by the U.S. army, Robot has his hands full. But with Shannon, his bullheaded but loving wife, the first robot/human family in the world might stand a chance.
1. Let Her Cry

One night, Robot lay awake, listening to the baby cry.

The baby monitor was off, but Robot could hear her, even downstairs in the lab. It was well beyond the point that Shannon should have swooped in and taken care of whatever it was Moza wanted done for her.

He tiptoed up the stairs and peeked into Shannon's bedroom, to find the sheets still tucked in and the pillows still fluffed. She wasn't home yet.

He stood there, in the doorway of her room, curling his fingers around the frame and staring into nothing, as the cries continued on.

An especially sharp cry dragged the reluctant automaton towards the baby's room.

On silent metal tiptoe, he moved down the hall, passed Beautrix's bed chamber, where she slept peacefully. He smiled, briefly, before remembering what waited for him in the nursery next door. He shifted from the left to the right, and into the white painted room with unicorn wallpaper.

The child's sobs seemed to get louder with every inch he moved closer, his footsteps slowing down, the rick of the joints in his ankles becoming longer as he rocked forward on his feet to move closer. It seemed like an an eternity passed before Robot picked the crying infant up and out of her crib, and held her close. He mimicked the human paternal rocking the best he could.

The automaton closed his eyes as the baby was magically lulled to sleep. Never, never ever before until this moment had he appreciated human life like this.

From then on, Robot had no problem when Shannon decided to run some errands in the middle of the day and left him with both of the girls.

Since he had the habit of multitasking, he found himself taking care of the kids while also trying to complete other tasks. On one particular day, Robot was in the middle of drawing out plans for a device that could assist him around the house, while also balancing Moza in his arms. The desk in his lab was covered with blue paper, unused diapers, pens, pacifiers, pencils, a thermometer, screws, bolts, a teething ring, and a bottle. In the middle of what humans would call a "brain storm", Robot found himself putting down Moza's bottle every two minutes to write an additional note on the paper. Then he would pick up the still warm bottle and give it back to the impressively patient baby.

At some point, when he went back to the notes he was filling out, instead of grabbing the pencil, he grabbed the bottle he had just sat down and pressed the nipple to the blue paper, dribbling the milk all over. He paused and pulled it back up to his face, with a surprised look like it was the most alien thing he'd ever seen.

He let out a warm chuckle of defeat, and turned to the inquisitive baby in his wrapped arm. "Alright. Maybe I ought to finish feeding you first?"

The baby made the attempt to crossed her pudgy and stuck out her tongue, which Robot took for understanding. He carried Moza and the bottle upstairs to the nursery, and over to the corner of the room, where stood a rocking chair. He sat down and planted his legs flat on the ground as he kept the baby from burping in the middle of her feeding.

Watching her eyes grow heavy, Robot slid on light feet to the crib and rested her on the mattress inside. Above her head, he started the mobile—planets and stars, very typical of what a mobile would have. And a single spaceship on the outer rum, encircling the plastic meteors in an endless loop. Television and movies had promised that people would see these things by the turn of the new millennium, but as the clock struck another year closer to the deadline, it occurred to Robot that the humans nor robots would most definitely not have such technology among them soon. Sentient robots was one thing, but astro-imperialism was another. Perhaps Robot would never see it by his due date, but Moza would, surely. Even if it took her whole life. Or maybe just another ten years.

Robot thought about what else the child might see in her lifetime. "Oh, Moza unit," he said, pulling a strand of her long brown bangs away from her eyes, "What does the future hold for you? Will you live to see a time when robots and humans live side by side in harmony?"

He wanted more than that, and his heart knew it. He wondered about inter-species relationships. Would such a day come when he could claim Moza as his adoptee without humans and robots both grabbing torches?

A sigh escaped his mouth as he stepped away from the crib. No matter how much time Robot spent with her, no matter how much contact they had, no matter how much Robot loved her, and even in the off-shot that someday Moza would come to return his love, she would never be his child. She would never be his to call his own. She would never be anything to him but the daughter of his love, the one who kept him safe, and he nothing to her but his mother's servant, if he continued to work for her years down the road.

He thought the pain would be similar to that of when he realized Shannon would never truly love him the way that he loved her, but it was quite different. It was less hopeful, perhaps because it was his second time around, more bitter.

A few days later, Robot found Moza and Beautrix sat in front of the television, while it was playing some children's show that was putting forth a very lazy effort at being 'educational.'

"And who does Willy Worm love most in the whole world?" asked the faceless female narrator to the audience, in the standard, obnoxious kid-friendly tone. "Yes! Mommy Wormy!"

"Mama!" chimed the smaller green worm puppet in a baseball cap, giving the larger, darker green mother worm puppet an arm-less hug by leaning close to her.

"And who's that, inching his way to us? Right! Daddy Wormy!"

"Dada!" chimed the worm in his high pitched voice, giving the dad-worm puppet with a ridiculous colored tie a 'hug.'

"Willy Worm loves his Mommy Worm and Daddy Worm most in the entire world!" said the narrator, just before the screen cut to black.

Robot had shut the TV off with the remote. "Come on you two, we need to pick up Shannon from work." He set down the remote and picked up Moza in both arms. "Come on, Trixie."

"Coming, dad unit," Beautrix said, standing up and smoothing her dress.

Later, hours after the children were put to bed, Robot once again heard Moza's cries for attention from downstairs. He went up and crossed Shannon's bedroom, seeing a wrinkled eyed, exhausted Shannon toss under the covers of her bed as he passed. If this were a few months ago, Robot would feel it necessary to wake Shannon up and make her tend to the baby. But now things were different, and with much time spent with the baby, he had no hesitation to take care of the situation himself.

By the time he got to the nursery, Moza's cries had softened to a dry coughing. Knowing immediately what was bothering her, Robot picked her up and patted her on the back until she burped. After that, the only noise Moza made was cooing. "Da..."

Robot loved spending time with Beautrix, but his daughter was so self-maintaining and so obedient that it made things a tad boring, sometimes. All she needed were cans of oil every couple of hours, an occasional system check, and a short bedtime story every night, upon request. On the flip side, if Moza did anything, it was keep Robot busy. But it wasn't a stressful busy necessarily. It was different from the work he was used to, because Robot could actually see the effects of his work right before his eyes. It was a kind of work that felt like it contributed to his own mental health staying stable. As the stress of the war loomed over the outside world, he had one thing to worry about most of all: the care and keeping of this human child.

Robot smiled, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the embrace between him and the human child.

".. da..." she said again.

This time, Robot's eyes widened. He pulled Moza away and looked into the smiling girl's eyes.

"Da. Da-da."

His heart dropped into his tank.

 _She's not your child, Robot,_ said that horrible, nagging voice of truth. _She's not even your species. She's that of another man._

 _Then, what am I doing?_

How could something so logically wrong feel so correct? So right? He knew the bond that he felt with the child. He had already spent so much time with her.

But it was only when the bond appeared to have become mutual that Robot realized things had gotten far out of control. She wasn't just practicing her speech, she was trying to communicate something to him that should never be said between a robot and human-that should never be _felt_ between a robot and human. He pried the girl from his chest and focused his large pupils at hers. "No, Moza... you are mistaken."

And he went to set her back down into the crib, and she said it again. That phrase that made it feel like world around him and everything he knew was an illusion that was rapidly shattering. "Da?"

"No, Moza," he said again. This time his voice was broken and shaky. "Moza stop-"

"Da!" said the child again, reaching her arm above the top of of the bars-Gosh, she was getting big. _No. I should not be noticing this. I should not be_ caring _about this. I should not have been here to watch her grow like this. This is wrong!_

He knew the typical consequences of putting her back down in the crib before she was sleepy, but what he didn't predict was reaching the door and hearing her sob. He turned back briefly and saw the girl as warm tears ran down her chubby cheeks, looking completely heartbroken. Realizing his mistake, he turned away quickly, shut the door behind himself calmly, and stood there, waiting for her to stop. He somehow lost track of time and before he registered that she had stopped, Robot felt the need to wipe his own eyes on his sleeve.

By letting her cry, he was doing her a favor. It wasn't right to teach Moza that she had a true father in Robot when she really didn't. Emotions had fooled him into believing he was doing the right thing, but there was no running from it now. No, Moza would have to learn that Robot was not 'da', but Robot.

Just 'Robot.'

* * *

 _Originally Published January 7th, 2018_

 _Author's Note from the Story:_

This is a pretty old one so the writing is not as good as some of my newer stuff, but still worth posting.

 _Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?_ © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network


	2. Broke

She'd had a little less than forty dollars from her last allowance day. But it wasn't enough to cover a ticket. Nobody at school would loan her the money. And she knew Jessica was broke: She didn't get a regular allowance because all her mother's money went to household expenses. As cliche as it was, her lack of money did keep her separated from the popular crowd, and part of why she hung out with Moza.

There was only one person Moza could ask.

The house was quiet when she finally got home from school. Mission in mind, she set down her backpack two steps from the entrance, closed the door, and headed for the den. She'd been thinking about what she was going to say the whole time she was walking.

While on the outside, the house looked perfectly boring and inconspicuous, things were quite different on the inside, and part of why she never had friends over. The house was perfectly split between human and robotic interest. Whereas comfortable furniture such as chairs, couches, and beds were abound, the walls were only painted and the floor only wood or tile in places where it made the most sense. The rest was steel plating abound, on the floor, the walls, and the ceilings. Exposed wire and missing sprung up in random places where the house had been in the process of being "upgraded" whether for convenience or security. And except for Moza's room-which had once been pink when she was a baby, now painted black-the rest of the human parts of the house were painted white or industrial gray. To paint it any other colors would only serve to make the house look more ridiculous on the inside. The choice of gray, particularly for the den, also helped to deflect sunlight. Heavy, dark curtains in front of the few windows the house had also kept the light and humidity at bay, which was an intentional effort to cool the house well enough that the robots wouldn't overheat as easily. As much as she wished sometimes she lived in the house that was 100 percent "normal", instead of 50 percent, she admitted the cold air and dark, calm atmosphere of the house was welcoming in a place nowhere else was.

Opposite the entrance of the den from the living room was a flight of stairs, which lead up to her's and Robbie's rooms. Instead of going upstairs like she normally did, or grabbing a snack from the kitchen, she traced her hand over the railing to the staircase, and peered at the door next to it. Behind that door were the stairs that lead down into the basement.

Robot's lab. She wasn't allowed down there. Neither was Robbie. It reminded her of a book she read in fifth grade. One of the Goosebumps books, about the father working down in the basement doing strange things with plants, gradually growing more mysterious and demanding that the kids stay out. It turned out the project he was working on had taken over his entire lab, and himself in the process. Despite this, Moza didn't fear anything. For one thing, robots were unlikely to be controlled by plants, or anything that didn't directly affect their programming. The second thing was that while the dad in the book increasingly grew weird, Robot, being a robot, had always been weird.

Moza heaved a sigh, and approached the door. To call him was three, distinct raps on the door, and typically he'd drop whatever he was doing and appear promptly. This time, she didn't even complete the third rap before the door whisked open from the bottom to top-a recent installation that replaced the traditional hinged one that was once there. Slowly the house was becoming more robotic-or as Robot called it, efficient. She was glad the kids at school couldn't see the changes done inside the house. They'd have another reason to think she was weird.

The automaton looked down on her with an expression of direct intent. Coming on the 2nd wrap must have meant he wasn't occupied. But his tone suggested otherwise. "What do you need, Moza?"

A little pang of guilt hit Moza in the stomach before she could answer. She never went to Robot just to greet him after school, or to converse, or to express a problem. Not these days, anyway. She only went to Robot when she needed something. "Can I have twenty dollars?"

"You just got your allowance on Tuesday," Robot said, factually.

"Yeah, but I spent it already," she said, thinking fast.

"You spent forty dollars in three days?" He asked, both accusingly and yet calm. He had a way of saying things that made her feel even worse than if he had yelled.

"Yeah, but I gave it to Robbie!" Technically it wasn't a complete lie. Whenever Moza took Robbie out of the house, she did treat him with small things-a ball, a puzzle, or something bigger to stimulate his robotic mind, like a middle schooler's chemistry set. And even though he didn't get an allowance as a toddler, it wouldn't do him any good. He wasn't allowed to interface with a cashier. Would draw too much attention.

She had already spent well over forty dollars of her own allowance on Robbie. Just not all at once.

"What on earth cost that much?" Robot said, now narrowing his eyes. He didn't recall seeing Robbie run around with any big, new toy.

Moza tried to think of something, but her mouth hung open. Robbie didn't have anything new, and Robot knew it. There was only one way to salvage this suspicious situation, and she was dreading that it would come to this. She sighed dramatically. "OK. I spent it all. I know it's ridiculous, but I really need it this time," Moza pleaded, stepping forward.

"Why?"

Moza's mouth went dry. She lowered her gaze from his face to the floor. "Um… uh… girly… stuff…"

"Um, eh," Robot mimicked her, not intentionally. "Elaborate."

"I… need…. Tampons…" she murmured.

"Oh," Robot replied, his voice low too. His eyes wandered to the wall on his left, but he didn't look as Moza had hoped. His eyes were still narrow. "I see why you weren't straightforward. But now that I know, why don't I just go out and get them-"

"No! I mean-that's not what I was thinking. I know what to get-what I like." She was growing nauseous with every word.

If Moza wasn't staring so hard at the floor right now, she might have noticed the wry smile on Robot's face. "That's probably better, a robot such as myself would be confused about which products to get. Why don't I drive us-"

"NO!" The word tore from Moza's throat faster than she could stop it. The thought of him-outside. Outside the house. Where the kids would be. In the health and beauty aisle of a store. She nearly vomited.

It was exactly the type of horrified Robot was betting on.

"Moza, I've been around humans for forty years," he said, still smiling. "And if I have learned anything in that time, it is being able to tell when they are lying."

 _Damn._ Moza tore her eyes back up at him. He knew Robot would never torture her like that if she had been serious. Some men might have heard Moza's rationale for hearing the money and stopped asking questions right there and then. But Robot was different. Always doubting. Why did he have to do that?

"What do you really need the money for?" he asked her, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I have a date," she said, not emoting.

To this, Robot slowly raised one of his eyelids back up. "A date?"

Moza began to regret not trying to come up with another story.

"I don't think that is a wise idea. I do not know this place, I don't know the boy-"

"Of course you don't know him!" Moza shouted suddenly. "You don't know any of my friends!"

Moza realized she'd hit him right where it hurt. Just because Robot didn't know any of Moza's friends didn't mean he didn't want to.

"The answer," he said. "Is no. Whether or not you can find the money for it. You're not old enough to date."

With that, he flicked the switch the side of the wall in the doorway he was still standing, and let the metal separate them.

But Moza wasn't finished yet. Not this time. She flipped the switch on her side and watched the door wiz back up. "But Robot, come on!"

"I said, 'no'," he replied, as calm as ever

"But what if I could prove that I can be responsible?" Moza asked.

Robot let time for a pause, just long enough for Moza to complete a cycle of breath. Then he turned back to her. "Well, when I attended middle school and needed extra money, I was told to get a job."

"A job?"

"A part time occupation," he went on, "could prove beneficial to your income needs as well as your ability learn responsibility."

"Um, hello! Aren't there labor laws?" Moza asked, half chuckling. "Human kids don't get jobs."

"I believe you'll find that that is untrue," Robot said, looking less stern and more playful the more he talked. "If you need suggestions as to where to look, I have been researching-"

"Forget it," Moza interrupted. "If you want me to get a job, fine. But _I'll_ do the hunting. After all," she said, turning on her heel, "It's all part of that 'responsibility' thing, isn't it?"

"Moza!" Robot shouted, following her to the stairs. But the girl was already bounding for her room upstairs, where her laptop sat.

Suddenly, his eyes closed, his body rattled, steam billowing out of his joints as frustration manifested itself into a physical fit. But as soon as it had started, it was over. He'd learned in forty years how to manage his body when he was angry. And now that he had children to look after, he could not afford to have a meltdown. He clasped a hand over his eyes and concentrated on calming down. _It is okay, Moza is a teenager. You were a teenager. An attitude should be expected._ He pulled his hand away and gazed back up at the stairswith a calmer expression, but he was still uneasy. _But I forgot all about_ boys.

* * *

 _Originally Published December 31st, 2017_

 _Author's Note from the Story:_

So I'm posting this story out of chronological order, because a lot of these earlier scraps I wrote need more editing than the later ones.  
This takes place before Robot's disappearance but explains why Moza has a job at 13, and the boy she's talking about is the same one that she blows it with in that one. It's not my best work, but it's interesting enough to publish. And I'm on a roll here, so I might as well keep going.

 _Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?_ © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network


	3. Keeper of the House

Moza had to use every ounce of strength that morning to crawl out of bed. Her sleep that night had been awful. Judging by the light outside, and then her clock, it wasn't nearly close to time to go to school, but her body demanded food to replace the energy she couldn't make up with restful sleep. She shuffled bare foot out of the covers, across her carpeted room, and down to the tiled kitchen.

The floors in the house being either steel or tile, she would have been cold, except for the fact that her cybornetic feet had no temperature sensors. From the ankle down, she couldn't feel anything but the barest control of her foot and it's motion. When people who knew about her cyborg status asked what it was like to walk with feet she couldn't feel, she shrugged. You just get used to it, I guess, she said.

Normally, at this hour, Robbie would be set in front of the TV, watching the day's first cartoons, sipping from an oil can. The reason he was not was plain to her when he approached her and held up his can, looking sad. "Dad forgot to refill my canister. Can you fill it for me?"

Moza groaned with heavy eyes and swiped the canister from his little metal hands. "You're so useless," she muttered, before walking over to the corner of the room and starting the oil dispense machine. Like a coffee machine, it percolated and bubbled and was loud. Unlike a coffee machine, it needed no water or grinds, and was already hooked up to a large tank of oil hidden behind the wall, so large Moza herself would be unable to lift it. Moza carefully aligned the lip of the can under the nozzle, and messily dispensed the oil, even getting some spots on her nightshirt. But because it was black, it didn't matter. Handing the dripping can over to Robbie, Moza wondered how many times Robot had done that before he mastered how to do it without dripping a single drop. Or did it just come with the grace of autonomic precision?

"Thank you," Robbie said, lips dripping with something like hot, black tar. "So, how did your date go last night?"

"What do you care?" Moza muttered, pulling a wooden stool away from the corner and dragging it up to the stove, under the cabinets. "And who said it was any of your business, anyway?"

"I just thought..." Robbie said, looking sad.

Maybe it was because she was desperate to vent, but Moza found herself letting it spill out in front of the brat. He couldn't use the information against her in anyway, after like the other kids at school, anyway. "If you're dying to know, it was awful," she told him as she reached for a bowl in the top cabinet. She couldn't even see where she was reaching.

She hated being short. She had asked once if Robot could re-design her feet so that they extend like his and Robbie's limbs.

"That isn't necessary," he'd told her. "You'll experience your own growth spurts soon."

That may have been true, but 'soon' wasn't soon enough for her.

"What happened?" Robbie prodded, sincere worry in his voice.

"Well, I saved up enough money from my job to go to the concert with Cane, snuck out the window-which you will NOT tell Robot-" Moza said slowly and sternly, pointing a finger at him warningly. "Got down there, and the whole thing went to hell, because the rebel bots showed up. We ran from them, only for Cane to spill his guts about his dad getting killed by one of these things, aaaand, for me to make a complete fool out of myself by defending them."

She grunted as she hopped down from the top of the step-stool, her ankles perfect for the maneuver. "Oh, and he knows I'm a cyborg now."

"That's bad," Robbie said, with an inflection that it was as much a question of using the word correctly than a statement.

"Bad doesn't begin to describe it," Moza replied, taking her bowl to the counter. "The night that was supposed to bring us together was the night that just drove him away..."

Jutting from the wall, like the oil machine, were several faucets, each containing a form of dry food that Moza used often. The one on the far left dispensed her favorite cereal.

While the house was stalked with regular boxed snacks, Robot thought it would be more efficient to put some of them in air-tight boxes that dispensed for efficient timing. Moza had gotten used to this method when she was younger, and she admitted it was a lot less of a hassle, especially for mornings like this when she was ready to pack it in from the moment she woke. The only hassle was getting the cereal bowl down from the cabinet, but Robot had not left a clean bowl on the counter for her to use, like he normally did. Technically, that's two things he forgot this morning already.

She put the bowl under the faucet and turned the knob. Bits of sugary cereal flowed into the bowl, each piece making a tiny 'clink' against the porcelain. But she was surprised when the flow stopped before the bowl was half full. Moza shook the contents of her bowl, confirming that the amount wasn't enough, before cranking the handle further to the right. Nothing. Not a single piece more.

Robbie watched her turn two tiny locks that kept the door of the container on the wall, and looked inside. "It's empty," she said with disbelief, under her breath.

True to her word, the square, plastic box behind the wall was filled with nothing but cereal dust.

"Maybe he forgot to refill it," Robbie said, careful with every word, like they were loaded and could set off Moza.

"That's a lot of things to forget all at once," Moza said, neither mad nor sarcastic.

To say that Robot 'forgot' something was not to be taken lightly. Some mornings he may forget a tie. Sometimes he may forget to polish his cheeks, or wipe the grime from his eye lenses. Sometimes he even forgot to wash his suits so that they became visibly dirty from his chores. But to forget something related to the kids, specifically their food, was unheard of. In the thirteen years Moza had been taken care of by Robot, the only times he'd ever forgotten stuff like her cereal bowl, or to wash the dishes, or give Robbie his bottle, it was when he was profusely exhausted. And then still, Moza would wake up to him taking care of those very things before her eyes.

This time, the house was quiet except for them.

"I'm sure he has a bag of cereal somewhere, I'll just fill it later," Moza told Robbie, even though she was not sure at all. She didn't even know where she kept things that he bought and intended to put away for them.

Both kids turned from the kitchen to the den, with the door that lead down to Robot's lab, where he also slept. Timidly, they turned and marched towards it.

"Do you think he's asleep?" Robbie asked.

Moza bit her lip. "I don't know." It was also very unlike Robot to sleep in, especially on a school morning. He had an internal alarm which forced him to wake and detach himself from a charger no matter what he felt like. And he wouldn't refuse it's order. Unless, maybe he was just so very tired he couldn't get up this time. There had to be a time when it would happen. "If he is, I don't want to wake him up. He might really need the sleep."

"But won't he be upset when he wakes up?" Robbie asked. "What if he has other things to do today?"

Oh, Robbie. Always thinking logically. "You may have a point. I guess we have to wake him up."

Both kids stared at the door, neither willing to open it. It was in Robbie's timid nature to not want to wake his father, even if he was the kindest robot Moza had ever known, and unlikely to snap. The reason she didn't want to go was a bit more complicated. They weren't generally allowed down there. Safety purposes, Robot told them. But she couldn't shake the fear that was now building in her gut. Something that said he wasn't sleeping down there. That the emptiness of the house that was crawling all around them was a warning.

Moza grabbed the door and yanked it open with a single thrust, before she lost her nerve. From that point, it seemed easier for both of them to crawl down the flight of stairs leading to the basement. Unlike the upstairs, which doubled as an escalator, these stairs were made of metal and immobile, meaning they were inaccessible to units who were on wheels-not that that mattered, since Sheldon rarely visited, and wasn't allowed down there anyway.

Even though Moza had been down there only a handful of times, she knew where Robot slept. In the shadows was a long board with prongs on either side. Supposedly these prongs grabbed Robot and held him upright as he slept, plugged into the computer, which ran tests as he slept. It looked very uncomfortable to Robbie, who slept on a bed. However, Robot could supposedly sleep wherever he wanted, including a bed, as long as there was a plug nearby. This was just the way a model his age was supposed to sleep. Honestly, she liked it better to think of him on that Frankenstein's monster looking board. It saved her the gross image of him and Shannon lying in bed together.

Just as she feared, as Moza turned right from the front of the staircase, and peered into the darkness, the metal board was there, but Robot was not on it.

"Where is he?" she whispered, like someone nearby was not supposed to hear her. She looked at Robbie, but he was just as lost.

At this point, this was well and beyond Robot's normal behavior. And for a robot to behave out of normal could only mean he was prompted to act that way. Something had happened.

Moza looked back at Robbie, who stared at Robot's empty sleeping place with wide eyes, like a baby bird finding the nest empty. No food, no water. Just questions.

"He works late… sometimes," Robbie said at last. "I think… maybe he is still there."

Moza didn't respond. As much as as she wanted to believe that as a possibility, and as late as Robot tended to work some nights, he was always back by morning. Always.

Well, almost always. Once before, two years ago, the kids had woke to no Robot, but a breakfast waiting for them, and he'd come home before Moza had to go to school, albeit he looked exhausted. This time, there was no oil, no cereal, no bowl.

Come to think of it, Moza also had recently changed the toilet paper-which she almost never found herself doing, and cleaned up one of Robbie's messes. Even though the kids saw less and less of Robot the older they became, his presence was always laced throughout the house, whether in lemon polish or fresh food. Or the gentle sounds of work coming from the lab downstairs. Or a news station playing on the monitor down there. Yesterday morning, there was no political debate coming from the TV, or freshly wiped counters. One day, two days max. But by three days, she should have remembered something changing.

"It's like he's been gone for days," Moza said allowed.

But how? How could they have not noticed until now.

"You mean you didn't know?" Robbie asked, sounding shocked, and uncharacteristically critical.

"Well, neither did you!" Moza shouted. _Get a grip, said a voice in her head. That's just what he'd expect us to do: Toss the blame back and forth._

Maybe he left a note somewhere. But if he'd wanted them to see it, he would have put it in plain site. If he'd put it anywhere, they would have seen it already.

Unless, it was down here.

"Split up," Moza told Robbie, "and look for a note. Robot wouldn't have left us without at least saying something.

Robbie nodded, and did as he was told, starting on the side by Robot's table, as if he was drawn there. Moza went the other way, but getting through the lab proved difficult. As neat and tidy as the upstairs was, the basement was a near wreck. Bottles and batteries, papers and wires, tech and notebooks, everything was tossed about haphazardly.

Robot's computer was still powered on-and unlocked. Another bad sign. While Moza wasn't the type to go snooping on the automaton, it wasn't in his nature to leave his computer unlocked. He was pretty private that way. Still, Moza was thankful that she didn't have to try and hack it. To hack a nerd's computer was difficult. To hack a robot's computer: Nay impossible.

But having his computer unlocked meant that Moza look at what he was last up to before he disappeared. She was hoping an article or a recent video post that he was watching would give her an idea of when the computer was last used, but the only windows onscreen were codes that meant no sense to her. The last saved date on the windows was five months ago-well before Robot's disappearance.

Then Moza had an idea. She went to the server and checked when the last time the computer had been powered on before it had last gone into sleep mode-A week ago. Robot still hadn't been gone even that long.

Nothing on the computer was helping, and the coding was gibberish to her. It probably had nothing to do with the situation anyway, but a date and time would have helped. She slumped her arms against the console and propped her head up with a groan.

"What if dad left some kind of hint on our desktop?" Robbie asked. "Somewhere he'd think we'd see it.

Moza looked up, bring eyed. "That's too logical."

Without another word, she and Robbie ran back up the stairs and to the living room computer. From there, Moza logged onto her desktop-which she and Robbie shared as a form of kid's network. Typing in the query "emergency" seemed like a logical question, and sure enough, in the many program files that the kids had never questioned having been there, were documents and videos that appear to have been made by Robot himself.

"That one's dated three weeks ago!" Robbie shouted. He lunged over the computer, smacking Moza's hand in the process, and clicked the tiny thumbnail with Robot sitting center-screen.

As he apologized, the video started promptly. Just like in the thumbnail.

In the video, the lighting was poor, suggesting that the video was filmed in the basement. It cast shadows beneath Robot's eyes, making him look even older than usual. It worked to the effect that he seemed to command more authority as he spoke.

"Hi kids," he said, quickly, facing the camera, but eyes darting all over the place.

Hi kids? Not hello children, or hello units?

 _How uncharacteristically informal_ , Moza thought.

"I would never leave you intentionally, but you see, the work I have found myself in the past few months has put me in an awkward situation I am afraid that I have obligated myself for a circumstance which commands me to leave you, for a short time. If you are seeing this video right now, this could mean that I have been called. I don't know f it will actually happen, when it will happen, and I don't know how much notice I will have, but if it happens, it will be quite soon."

"On the right of my computer," Robot said, as kids turned their head in the direction," is a cabinet. It is stacked with at least two weeks of non-perishable foods, a first aid kit, and two weeks worth of oil and spare batteries for Robbie. The water and electricity bills are automatically paid. If I have disappeared, this will hold you over for a short time. But," he paused. "if I do not return in seven days time, I give you permission-" Suddenly he stopped, closed his eyes in what looked like a painful motion, and grunted. "-I order you," he said, like the words were labored, "to call the authorities." He closed his eyes again and shook his head, like he has fighting back a tremendous headache. "And kids, be safe. Video over."

The window closed as soon as the video time had expired, leaving Robbie and Moza with nothing but cold air and the _whush_ of the AC between them.

The cabinet. Moza had never thought that the downstairs lab would contain anything unrelated to Robot's research, let alone emergency supplies for the two of them. The unlocked, rectangular cabinet swooshed open in Moza's hands without effort, and inside were stacks of cans, bottles, and well-wrapped packages. Nothing that looked particularly appetizing, given Moza's appetite for Robot's surprisingly good cuisine. She rubbed her finger over the rim of one of the nearest cans, and a layer of fine dust came off in her fingers. Indicative that the food had been there for quite a while.

While the top shelf held all the human food, the bottom shelf displayed the cans of oil and batteries that Robot had explained were left for Robbie. The boy automation reached for the first can in his site, and grimaced. "Ew, Petrol!" he looked up at Moza. "Dad knows I hate this stuff!"

Moza unforgivingly swiped the can from Robbie's ungreatful claws, and examined the can for a date. "Why would Robot give us two weeks of food, but demand that we call the police after five days?"

She knew what the point of having them wait for Robot's return at all was about. They couldn't call the police the instant they were left alone, living in a rather illegal state as they were. If nothing was wrong with Robot, they'd jeopardize their living arrangement.

"If he knew he was leaving, why wouldn't he just tell us in person?" Robbie asked.

"He did say he didn't know for sure if he'd be leaving," Moza answered thoughtfully. "But that still doesn't explain why he couldn't just warn us about it agreed if time."

Was it just Robot's way of thinking? Or was he afraid of saying this to them? While it was in Robot's nature to distance himself from awkward questions, it was awfully cowardly of him.

Too cowardly, Moza thought.

"Something's wrong," Moza said.

It's illogical for Robot to approach the situation this way. And if it was illogical, it wasn't true. Robot was lying.

"W-what do we do?" Robbie asked, looking up at her.

Moza saw the tears forming in his eyes. In that moment, it didn't matter to him that he was a robot and she was a human. That he had so much logic and knowledge at his fingertips and she had to learn it all the hard way. All that mattered was that she was the older one, the wiser one. It was all up to her.

That did not make her feel any better.

Moza gulped. Five days. They still didn't know exactly how long he'd been gone. Did that number mean anything? Or was it just a general number he thought up. He talked about the mission like it was just part of his job, but then why even state the possibility that he wasn't coming back? If he gave a limit to the number of days he was supposed to be gone, that had to mean that if he wasn't back by now, he couldn't just willingly come home.

Trying to swallow the knot in her throat, again, Moza thought guiltily of the fact that she and Robot barely spoke to each other unless it was necessity. Was it because he knew that it might take days for her to realize that he was gone? Her hunger from earlier suddenly ceased. She only realized he was gone when her cereal ran low. Robbie, with his oil, too. If the situation had been reversed, Robot would know to the minute when she returned home, even if he didn't disturb her with a greeting. From Robbie it was excusable. But her? 13? It was pathetic!

Moza rubbed the dust off her fingertips from the can she held. How long had Robot been expecting this to happen? And why was it so important that the kids didn't know about it until it did. "Robbie, I don't think Robot is coming back so soon."

"Oh no,"

"But it's OK, I've got a plan," she lied. She didn't know anything. The first part of the plan was not being immobile, was all she knew.

Moza ran right passed Robbie, who spun on his heels. "B-but dad said to call the authorities!"

"And what would I tell them? Oh, one of the most wanted robots in the city's gone missing. And by the way, he further breaking the law by raising me for 13 years?" She was hot with anger. "They'll take him away-they'll take us all away! And split us up!"

Robbie's lip began to quiver. "Split us up?"

"That's what they'll do if they find out! You'll never see Robot again, and I'll…"

Moza paused. Where would she go? A foster home? An Orphanage? Technically, she WAS an orphan. No one ever attempted to give her the comforting notion that she may have extended family somewhere other than her slaughtered parents, so there must have been no chance of it. With Shannon gone and Robot missing, Moza had no one else. At least Robbie had the rest of the Joneses. If not Robot's mother, than Jack, Sheldon, and Grampz would gladly raise Robbie. He was their coding. The only ones on the world who wanted Moza were Robot, who designed her prosthetics, and Shannon, who mirrored her cybornetic place in society. The thought of losing the two closest people in the world she could call parents gave her a deeply inset panic she never felt before. The same a small child would feel being lost in a shopping mall. Tears pushed against the back of her eyes, but she refused to let them get any further than that. Right now was not a time to break down like a child. She waited until she could undue the tightness in her throat before turning to the quivering automaton. "Robbie, I need you to be strong for me right now. You do everything that I say, understand?"

It was such a cliche thing to say, but Moza couldn't think of anything else that would have the same calming effect. And just as shed hoped, he stopped quivering, and nodded.

"The first thing we've got to do is get help.I'm going to try to get a hold of Shannon."

Robbie was better in control of his emotions now, but still sniveling. "But don't you think it is wiser to call Grandma?"

Moza shook her head. "I'd rather not bring the other robots into this yet. Robbie, if something's wrong with Robot, they'll be worse off."

Besides that, she had a feeling Shannon was the only one who had any idea where Robot would be. Robot shared more with her than anybody else. More than his own family, learned that early on.

In her backpack, she removed all her school supplies-textbooks, pencils, pens, artbook-all useless to her now. And in its place, she filled the backpack with what she estimated were five days worth of rations, water included. The 2nd main pouch on the backpack held her laptop, a tiny notebook, perfect for portability, and next to it, she slipped the first aid kit. She doubted she would need it, but if Robot had bothered to prepare it, she felt a guilty pain too great to leave it behind.

She remembered when he had used this exact first aid kit when she'd fallen off her tricycle. At age 3, she'd taken a hard spill when her trike wheel had dipped into the grass away from the sidewalk, and flung her a foot into the dirt. Robot was there immediately, gently wiping the dirt from her face, and placing a bandage over her left kneecap. That memory in itself made the kit particularly precious to her.

As she lifted it up to her shoulder, she felt it's new weight and all its anxieties. She was not going to school today, or work. She was going to find danger, and take her Robot back from it.

Moza then helped Robbie pack. Because he didn't need to eat, his backpack was much lighter than hers. Only two cans of oil and a spare battery. A young robot didn't require a battery change very often, unless the robot or the battery was damaged somehow. But because it was essential to function, Moza packed one just in case. While shutting down may not harm Robbie, she knew it terrified him to think of being unconscious and not being able to do anything. She wondered if it would have been better to leave him behind, but what would happen to him? What could happen to him? If Robot did not leave of his own free will, what if whatever took Robot came back for his son?

As she helped him put the bag on, she was envious of how light it was, and was tempted to ask him to carry some of her food-he was a robot, after all. The weight wouldn't bother him. But she didn't feel it was right to ask him that. He was dependent on her now. So was Robot.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she stood back up. At once, she realized Robot had been right: She needed to learn some responsibility. Just this morning she was annoyed at the lack of cereal flowing into her bowl. How petty it seemed now.

Knowing that there was no way to tell the school what she was going to do, Moza didn't bother to call. But there was somebody she did need to inform of her absence. She had a job, and she was determined to have that job still when this whole thing was over.

* * *

 _Originally Published December 30th, 2017_

 _Author's Note from the Story:_

Another adult-aged RJ fic. This takes place just before the events that finally get Sparrow back home, and as you might guess, Robot's disappearance may have something to do with a new lead as to her whereabouts for all these years, but why so mysterious about it? Where exactly has Robot gone, and will the kids be able to find him? Stay tuned.

 _Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?_ © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network


	4. The Sleepless Soldier

Robot had often scoffed at the notion of other robot parents simply turning off their children when they've had enough of them for a day. He promised never to do that to Robbie because it was inhumane.

But for Sparrow, who had not been allowed to experience true sleep for 13 years, the kindest thing her father could do for her the moment he resumed custody of her was to shut her down.

The other robots gasped as Robot, in the midsts of a hug, reached behind her neck and found the tiny safety controls. They weren't as simple as a light switch. One would have to know exactly where they were and how they worked in order to properly shut her down. But the motion was so fast that even Sparrow, with war-trained reflexes, did not see it coming.

Anybody who saw it as an act of betrayal understood once Robot told them of Sparrow's forced wake program. They let him carry her limp body to the lab and gently set her down on his bench. The first thing he did was hook her up to his computer so he could see her programming from the outside-he needed to see exactly what they had done to her since enlisting her in the army, including how they managed to keep her perpetually awake for years. Once he thought he figured out which program it was, he deleted it and all traces of it that he could find, which, in theory, would allow her original sleep cycle to continue.

He had no time to go through all of it and make sure he wasn't deleting some sort of important military documents. Instead, he quickly moved her systems of all data he deemed irrelevant to her new objective-being a teenage girl-to a separate hard drive, and then deleted them on her drives.

The next step was a body makeover-at least sort of. Robot carefully disabled all but few of her weapons, and in the process, junked a bunch of metal and made her body much lighter. He replaced small parts of her outer shell that were damaged or outdated in the process.

He then let Sparrow's body run its own system's check. It was the fastest way of making sure he didn't forget anything. When he saw the results on the monitor come back happy, he switched her from 'off' to 'sleep' and unhooked her from the monitor. A normal society-dwelling robot had a sleep cycle that was intended to conveniently match up with that of the human's-roughly 8 hours at night. It was 11pm by the time Robot finished, and though he had put Sparrow's sleep cycle back to a natural state, he doubted she'd wake up for a while. Even robot bodies have a tendency to try and overcompensate for lack of a necessary, whether it be sleep, oil, or charge.

Again, Robot picked her up in his own arms and carried her to her room. Though the other robots and even Socks were tempted to ask him if he needed help once they saw him grunt under the weight of his own exhaustion, they knew better than to bother. Robot would not allow anything to come in between him and the child that he had been searching for for over a decade.

Sparrow's room had not changed from the day that she had been taken away. Only an occasional dusting and vacuuming warranted a visit. And Robot forced an iron flat expression for all those times, knowing that she was alive, and she was going to come back to it someday. Now was that day.

The first thing that Sparrow saw when she woke naturally was morning light, spilling into the room from the one square window across from her bed. She blinked heavily a few times, reluctant to embrace the feeling of awakeness. She lay and tried to think about what had happened. Almost immediately, her immediate memory dropped the scene with Robot in her head. The hug. Then blackness. That was the last thing she remembered.

She sprung up from the sheets like a spooked cat. The hug. Distrust crawled up her arms like fleas, and she pulled her legs close to her body.

It must have been a loud jolt, because seconds later, Robot poked his head into the room, looking puzzled. "You're awake already?"

Sparrow lowered her legs back down onto the bed, and gawked at him. "You shut me down."

Robot blinked with heavy eyes, like Sparrow did when she first woke. Evidently he did not get a long sleep. "Your programming wouldn't let you sleep," he replied calmly. "I had to disable it."

"I didn't want to sleep," Sparrow said. She spoke if it were a fact in a textbook. But her eyes were narrow.

If Robot were thinking logically, he couldn't fault Sparrow for feeling this way. Going from a ballistic environment to the total calmness of a suburb had to be jarring. From sudden gunfire and men's wounded cries, to a place where the only sounds to break up the monotony of the night were cicadas and cars sweeping quietly through the streets, would give anyone, man or machine, intense anxiety. She didn't want to sleep because the world around her was too new.

But Robot wasn't thinking with logic right now. Her words stung him, because he knew she was reacting perfectly within reason, but he wished she wasn't. "You didn't want to, but you needed it. It was wrong of them to force you to stay awake. It's amazing it hasn't totalled your battery."

Sparrow wanted to retort, but she turned away. She didn't want to admit that she did feel quite different, after a night of finally getting to sleep and reboot. She didn't know if better was the right word. It was weird to feel rested, even a little. She was still tense, but maybe not as tense as she would have been without it. She rubbed the back of her neck, where her tiny shut off buttons were located. The cloth she wore over her head had fallen off at some point. In fact, now that she looked at herself, she didn't recognize the clothes on her body.

"Shannon gave you some of her clothes," Robot said, noticing where she looked and lacing the fingers of his gloves. "They don't quite fit, but they're... cleaner than what you were wearing."

Sparrow brushed a hand across the fabric of her sleeve. Even without nerve endings, she could tell these clothes were softer than what she had arrived wearing. Army clothes were made to keep in heat, to hold things, to shield, to protect. These clothes she was wearing now were delicate, fragile, and had no pockets. It only made her feel more vulnerable. She ran a hand up to her her head and felt the cold metal of her own head.

The clothing swap was only good on Robot's end. As far as he was concerned, he didn't care if she wore a banana suit for the rest of her life, but he would never let her wear cargo shorts and camoflage ever again. "I thought you might want this," he said, reaching into his own pocket and pulling out a cloth. Sparrow contemplated requesting a pair of pants with pockets as she let Robot drape a roughly matching purple cloth over her head, attaching it with a strong barrette so that it stayed fixed to her head. "To deflect the sunlight."

She didn't argue with it. The cloth was somewhat close to a hijab she wore when she went exploring the streets of the towns she was sent to spy on. Fully dressed, people passed her without even knowing she was a robot. It was the closest thing to her old clothes that she had.

Because sleep was dangerous. Because it was more humane-no, because it was just easier to find a way for a guard robot to stay awake constantly, rather than cause a good human soldier to stay awake.

"Beautrix."

"Why do you call me that?" Sparrow asked.

Robot gaped at her. "Because that's your name," he said, carefully articulating the words.

"I don't remember that," she said, itching her head with her claw, as if it would help dig up the memory. How much of herself was forgotten? How much of what she was supposed to be was just deleted?

Fair enough. She was, technically, the robot he built 13 years ago, but she was not emotionally, mentally, or physically. All of that had changed. Letting go her original name seemed like a small price for having her back.

Robot sighed. "Fine. What would you like to be your designation then?"

"Sparrow." It was the only name she knew-well, other than the standard "girl", "robot" "bucket of bults," and other various dirty words to call a machine. It was the only thing she'd ever been called that sounded like a name. It was a name that came from the only humans who appreciated her. Who thought her ability to scale buildings like a spider and fly like a bird were cool.

"Sparrow unit," he repeated, etching the name into his memory. It wasn't an ugly name. And it was one that she was already used to. How coincidental that they had nicknamed her after a bird. He considered telling her about the experimental Canary crime fighting suit from when he was younger, but the atmosphere of the room wasn't appropriate for silly childhood stories.

"I don't want to go back to sleep," Sparrow told him. She had to see everything. The new world that belonged to her.

"Fine," Robot said. He wondered if talking like an officer would resonate better with her. It was so difficult to want to talk to her that way, when he ached to coddle her. "You may come downstairs and have a can of oil. Now, please stand up so that I can make the bedding."

Sparrow started moving the instant he finished speaking. It was the first command she had had since she was home, but she was still emotionally wired to follow them immediately, and without a word. Instead of going downstairs, Sparrow stood on the far side of the room and watched him work. Maybe she didn't need a dismissal in order to leave, but it didn't feel right to let him do that without standing by in case he asked for help.

Just like he did everything, Robot made the bed quickly and efficiently, moving from one task such as fixing the bed skirt to tucking in the sheets without a moment's hesitation. It was clear that he didn't need any help.

But as he was laying down the top sheet, Sparrow noticed him slow down. He held the corner of the sheet one hand, the edge of the bed in the other, hunched over the side. It appeared like he was trying to fold the corner away in a triangle shape, but he was stuck in place. Barely a minute passed before he dropped the corner of the sheet and pressed the hand to his face. He was shaking.

He's going to crash, Sparrow thought. Trained to react immediately to a man about to fall, Sparrow rushed to his side and wrapped her arms around his waist to keep him up. But she didn't feel him fall into her arms. In fact, when she grabbed him, his back went erect.

His head swung around to her, apparently surprised that she was still there. His eyes were dark and black beads were pooling at the bottom, and then Sparrow realized that he wasn't fainting. He was crying.

Sparrow was lost for a reaction. She just stared like it was the last thing on earth she'd ever thought she'd see.

"It's just…." Robot tried to talk, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands, "That I haven't been able to do this… do this for you, for 13 years."

* * *

Sparrow left the room, soon after followed by Robot, who had dried his eyes well enough so that Shannon wouldn't be able to tell he'd been crying.

"There's our sleepless beauty," Shannon hummed, coming out of the bathroom and wrapping her arms around the shebot. Instead of flinching and pulling away, Sparrow let the human hold her and stroke her head.

If they had both gone to Polyneux, Robot could never in a million years have seen Shannon and Sparrow have become friends. Whereas Shannon was a master of hiding her broken parts Sparrow was completely transparent. But, they had some things in common. They were both shamelessly awkward, something that carried even into Shannon's adulthood. They were both tall, and thin, and something about having lived together in cramped conditions, protecting each other, had made them grow made them even look similar, Robot thought. The purple on Sparrow's lanky robot body, upgraded to look like a girl of 14, had the disturbing quality of reminding him of Shannon. Too much. Had he really subconsciously built her in the form of the woman he loved?

Moza came up the stairs, with unbrushed hair, and a glass of chocolate milk in her hands. "You're awake!" She ran forward before Sparrow could protest and wrapped her free arm around Sparrow's torso, locking Sparrow's arms to her sides-spilling drops of milk on the floor. Sparrow was so thin that even with Moza's short arms, she could reach around her torso completely.

Shannon gave a look of annoyance at Moza and silently bent over to wipe up the floor. When Moza let her go, she gazed at her from her head to her feet. "Oh my God, you're tall," she said with a humph. Then she looked annoyed back at Shannon. "You didn't tell me!"

"Tell you what?" Shannon asked as she inspected the floor. "As of her being tall was a relevant detail."

"It is to me!" Moza said back, feeling her cheeks grow hot. Only those who reached their teenage years short, like her and Robot, would understand why that tiny detail mattered. Moza hadn't expected the shebot to be both taller than her, as well as older.

"She has undergone quite a few upgrades," Robot remarked, his eyes dry but still stained beneath the lenses. Robot wasn't referring to the quick cosmetic changes he performed on her when he brought her home. Over the years, Sparrow's body had been modified for efficiency as well as speed. A weapon constantly changing. When they had decided that her-or should it be say, her father's ability to interact personally with the humans, which she inherited, they thought it best that she looked more like an adult, hence the upgrades tended to make her taller, as well as thinner.

All the attention. Never before had Sparrow been the subject of everybody in the room before. It was overwhelming, and... disgusting. They were talking about her appearance. Her looks. She faught in a war. Saved innocent lives, slaughtered guilty ones. Served her country, and then rebelled against it. Done horrible things and was forced to stay awake at night to think about it. She had accomplished both good and evil in a war with no advantages for anyone, and all they could talk about was her looks.

She never felt so hollow.

* * *

 _Originally Published December 30th, 2017_

 _Author's Note from the Story:_

Here's another present-time set RJ fic with my OCs, this one dealing with the aftermath of Sparrow being brought home. Her sleep function was disabled so that she could stay awake and guard, but this has caused her to have hallucinations, among other issues. Robot has to deal with trying to retrain Sparrow to be a daughter rather than a soldier, and Sparrow, of course, is resistant, feeling that all she's been through has made her more mature and self-caring than other children her age. (13).

Posting this to encourage more RJ fics to be posted!

 _Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?_ © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network


	5. The Bird with Two Homes

Most people who were pulling into their driveways after a long day of work were too tired to notice to the adult sized metal man, working under the hood of a vintage car outside the Jones house. Robots were not an uncommon site around the house with this name. The visiting red-eyed robot initially caused some neighbors to raise eyebrows in concern as they first laid eyes on him, but it was soon clear that the robot was as stable as any of the other robots living in that home. However, nothing was quite as disturbing as one of the young ones bursting through the door and running straight into the street and down the cul-de-sac around dinnertime.

"Sparrow, stop!" shouted Shannon as she followed the figure out the door of their home. But the slim purple-dressed robot was already half way down the block.

The new robot, Jet, raised his head from beneath the hood of the car. "Somethin' up?"

Shannon was soon followed by yet another six foot robot by the name of "Jones," who looked a lot like Jet, but wore an overly pressed suit and tie, and twice as much concern on his face as she was as he came up to her stopping point on their front lawn.

"What was that about?" he asked in his computerized voice, finding her eyes.

"Bad day at school," Shannon sighed. "I think. I couldn't make a lot of sense of what she was saying, but it sounded like something set off her flashbacks."

"Oh, no," Robot said. "I have to go after her before she scares the kids playing outside."

"Bro," Jet called from across the lawn. He slammed the lid of his Dodge Challenger and looked up at his brother. "Let me go after her."

"What?" asked Robot.

"I think I can get her to talk about it," he said, coming forward. "Leave it to me."

Jet's older brother gaped at him, then looked to his wife. They both shared a moment of silence before Shannon looked back at Jet and shrugged. "Go for it."

Jet took off down the block on his own two feet, casting a long shadow behind himself in the setting sun. By the time he figured out where Sparrow had gone, the sky had formed the perfect sunset on the horizon of the Atlantic, and the she-bot was a barely visible silhouette at the end of one of the docks of the harbor.

The robot only slowed his pace once he reached the wooden boards of the long deck. He was five feet away from her, and while she didn't move, she had to have heard someone approaching from behind. "Hey."

Sparrow's head didn't even flinch. She was as still as a statue, which came as no surprise to Jet, because robots of their kind were designed to have that ability. Thinking of anything to prompt a response, Jet said: "I sincerely hope you are not thinking of moving an inch closer to that water, _niñita_."

"And what would it matter to you?" Sparrow answered. Jet was somewhat taken aback at the frankness with which she said that statement. It should have had a teenage ring of rebellion, and even though Sparrow had the _ability_ to speak with that inflection in her voice, it came out flat.

"Nothing really," Jet said, copying her voice. "'Cept that if I let you jump, your dad would go push me in right after you. And I ain't really in the mood to go swimming today."

Sparrow turned her head away from the sea towards Jet, the scarf hanging over her head fluttering with the movement, but her face as tense as a hawk. "Did he send you after me?" she demanded.

"What does _that_ matter?" Jet asked.

In the first burst of emotion-filled movement since Jet had arrived, Sparrow spun away from the edge of the dock, and stood, as if ready to fight. "Because they're _fools_! Dad, Shannon, all of them! _Fools_! Stupid civilians who know absolutely nothing about anything. Who sit at night and watch football, or some awful dating show, instead of learning about what city just got bombed, and how many soldiers died! Who dragged me away from my job, from trying to help them-!"

"Sparrow-" Jet started flatly.

"-And they expect me to sit in class, and listen to some dried up humanoid instructor tell infantile humans about a sculpture that was made twenty thousand years ago, when they give as little a care about _that_ as how many people died in the Civil War? Or the war we're currently having?"

"Sparrow-" Jet said again, more annoyed.

"And I have to sit there, and watch the girls chew on flavored rubber sticks and twirl their hair and giggle and talk about what boy they think is the most attractive, and-" she yanked on the ends of her scarf as if it were hair, "-Oh, Jet, it's stupid! It's so stupid!"

"Sparrow!" Jet shouted.

"And he has the nerve, the _nerve,_ to expect me to just assimilate with them!"

"Who has the nerve?"

"Robot!" Sparrow spat. "That robot who shut me down and took away my weapons! That inconsiderate, old-"

"Hey, hey!" Jet said. "Don't talk about your pop that way."

She finally paused, to roll her eyes. " _Tsk_. He's just a unit who made me." She found his eyes, and spoke a bit softer. "Bet you don't love the guy who made you."

"The men who made me were pricks," Jet said, flatly. "But they weren't my parents, either."

Sparrow looked down at her feet, which were covered in half-shredded purple slip-on shoes. In the army, she wore cargo boots, if she ever wore shoes at all. The new shoes had been purchased for her first day of school, and were already ruined, due to the carelessness that she just inflicted on them while running here to the pier.

"The demons of the war crawled back up on you today, didn't they?" asked Jet.

Sparrow said nothing at first. Then, "Lunch."

"Huh?"

"I was in the cafeteria, and the noise, it was all over. It made me uneasy. Then I heard a blast, and I hid under the table, and people were laughing at me." She spoke, sounded drained. "Turns out, somebody just dropped their tray on the ground. I felt so stupid." She leaned her head over Jet's arm, her eyes tightly closed. "I'll never learn to live this way. I wish Robot would just send me back."

"Hey, kiddo, let me tell you something," he said. "You don't know how lucky you've got it. Your dad wanted you back because he loves you so Goddamn much, and it would've killed him to see you expire out on the front lines. Especially so young." He patted her shoulder. "Wish our parents could've done something to get me out of spending half my life out in Afghanistan. Alas, here I am. And you know what?"

"What?"

"I'm the best motherfucking aim-bot the army ever knew. And I'm proud of it." He sat down with her on the deck. "But I knew when I was getting tired of it. I wanted to go home. Watch some TV. Clear my head. Figure out what my new purpose was going to be."

"What is that?"

Jet shrugged. " _Lo que sea._ Whatever. But it's up to _me_ to decide. That's all that matters."

Sparrow looked out onto the harbor one more time before turning to her uncle-unit. "But I'm just not ready. I have so much more I could be doing to help people survive-to help us win this war."

Seeing as he was not getting any further, Jet sighed. "Fine. Tell you what: If it's honestly what you want, I'll have a talk with Robot and, I don't know, see what we can do about getting you back."

For once, the teenage robot's eyes lit up with optimism. "You mean it?"

"Yes."

Sparrow nodded. "It's honestly what I want."

They stood up together, side by side, and left the dock, taking the long road back home.

By the time they got there, it was already dark out, and the lights to the Jones house were all lit up. Shannon practically took the door down the same way Sparrow had earlier as she rushed out to greet them. "There she is!" she shouted, running down the porch and wrapping her arms around Sparrow.

Jet let this happen while Robot slid out the door behind her. He made eye contact with his older brother over Shannon's shoulder and whispered, "Ey, Robot, we gotta chat."

"What about?" Robot asked, suspiciously.

Abruptly, Sparrow pushed Shannon's arms off of her, and ran up to Robot. "Jet says he's going to talk to you about sending me back to Iraq."

"Aw, _fuck_!" Jet said, stomping his foot.

"What?" Shannon shouted.

Robot was shaking with fury. "What?" He turned to Jet. "You are soooo scrapped."

"Ey, ey, listen!" Jet said, holding up his arms. "I had a plan!"

"Your plan was to defy me?!" Robot screamed.

"No! Listen, I meant to talk it over with you in private!"

But Sparrow couldn't help but butt in. "So, you're going to try, right? Right?" She pleaded, desperately.

She leaned in so close that Robot had to lean back. He was struck speechless by the hope in her eyes. He couldn't believe such want came from a creature who had spent her entire life in hell, to return to said hell. He sputtered once, twice, then looked at everyone around him. "Wha-how-uh-alright-alright!" He shouted, a man gaining control of his castle. "Everybody, in the house! _Now!"_

Silently, everybody filed inside, and Robot slammed the door after them. While the adults conversed in the dining room, Sparrow was sent to her room, a can of oil hastily pushed into her hands as 'dinner'. Along the way, Robbie followed her, crawling up the stairs on all fours like the family pet. "What's going on? Why are Shannon and dad shouting? Is Uncle Jet in trouble?"

"I don't... I don't know..." Sparrow said, sounding scared.

"What did he do?"

"He didn't do anything!" Sparrow said, disbelieving what she was saying. "Robot just snapped."

"Wow," Robbie said, clutching his favorite airplane toy, which happened to be sitting on the stairs (despite Shannon constantly telling him not to leave his toys on the stairs), "I've never seen Dad Unit get mad at Uncle Jet before. He had to have done something pretty bad."

Sparrow didn't reply to this. As she got to the top of the stairs, Moza was standing in the doorway of her own room, her eyes wide with surprise. She mouthed a silent 'what happened?' to Sparrow, eyes darting to the bottom of the stairs to show that she heard the muffled argument, but Sparrow shook her head and waved her hand as if she honestly had no idea. Moza took Robbie inside his room to play a game with him, while Sparrow went to the room that the girls shared and sat on her bed, staring at her ruined slippers and sipping her oil.

She closed the door and put her head against the floor to try and make out what the adults were saying downstairs, but because the walls contained so much metal, even her robotic ears could not make out what they were saying. So she crawled back on the bed and waited.

This wasn't unlike the many times that she was told to sit by herself alone somewhere and wait for further only difference was that this room was particularly girly, with unicorns on the wall and clean, blue sheets, and a window and looked over neighbors yards. She was used to living in tight spaces, with cot beds, man sweat, and guns galore. (The description practically made Moza faint, particularly talking about how the young men looked and how she sometimes even caught one of them changing.) The difference made Sparrow feel as though this particular place was actually lonely. So that when she finally got a knock on the door, she was grateful for the distraction.

"Sparrow," said Shannon through the door, "Would you come down to the dining room for a moment?"

"Affirmative," Sparrow said, sliding off of the bed. Suddenly feeling the urge, she slipped off the ruined slippers and left them on the side of her bed, bounding down the stairs in bare metal feet.

When she got to the dining room, dinner had been cleared hours ago, and Robot and Jet sat on opposite sides of the bare table-Jet staring at a tiny imperfection on the table with an expression as if considering whether or not to zap it, and Robot holding his head in both hands. Shannon pulled out a chair for the young she-bot to sit in, then pulled out a nearby one for herself, so that they sat in between Robot and Jet.

Robot was the first to speak, lifting his head from his hand and looking at Sparrow. "So. Um. You showed interest," Robot said, biting his lip, "in wanting to go back." He could barely keep his eyes on Sparrow long enough, his eyes kept darting to the table, and to his fumbling hands.

"Well, yes," Sparrow said, sheepishly. She was unsure why she was suddenly shy to say so.

"And Jet," Robot said, no-accusingly, "Gave you the idea."

Sparrow looked at Jet. The robot's face was unreadable, but given his silence, he wasn't at all happy with his role in the drama that evening.

"What Robot means is," Shannon interrupted, trying to speak to Sparrow like an adult, " Is that, we've been talking about it, and you're not like other girls your age, Sparrow. You're more mature, and you might even be mature enough to decide what you want to do with your life already. So, while it will be difficult," she said, her words catching at the end of every breath, "We think we know a way it could be done."

Sparrow's mouth hung open. "... What?"

Jet leaned forward in his chair suddenly. "There's a guy I know from my time in Nevada. He's a real cool bot. I found out he got involved with the army through a pretty obscure organization that actually lets certain robots volunteer for the army. Not that many do. But some do. Especially when it comes to the effect on the whole, "robotic rights" thing."

" _And_ ," Shannon interrupted again for the sake of clarity, "There isn't an age requirement. And they don't put any of their robots on the front lines. But they do play a part in protecting the innocent in the cities."

"There is a catch, though," Jet said. "If they let you sign up, you gotta sign a twenty year contract with them. They basically take ownership of you from your factory maker. Or," he looked at Robot and Shannon. "Your parents."

Sparrow gaped a him. "Why didn't you tell me this on the docks?"

"I wanted to," Jet said truthfully. "It came up in the back of my head. But it's not something that I thought I had the right to tell you. That's why I was hoping I could talk to your old man about it before we told you that this thing was real," he said, gazing at Robot, who looked back at him with respect. "I got the connections, but it's between you and your folks, kid."

Sparrow looked at Robot, then at Shannon. "You'd really let me go?"

Shannon nodded, looking her in the eye. Robot did as well, but kept his gaze on the table.

Sparrow exhaled an imaginary lungful of breath, then spoke. "Let's do it."

Robot's eyes suddenly snapped upwards, pupils small, visible lines under his eyes. "Y-you mean it?"

"Yes," Sparrow said, looking at him, then Shannon and Jet.

Shannon let go of a _real_ breath she was holding. "Okay. Jet, I'm going to need some contact information."

"Already ahead of you," Jet said, pushing himself out of his chair. "Just get me a pen and some paper."

"There's some in the den, hang on," Shannon replied, getting up. Robot pushed himself out of his chair as well, but said nothing, and instead of following the other adults into the den, he headed to the kitchen. Sparrow leaned her head to see what he was doing, but had to get up herself to get a clear vantage point. Robot was leaning over the counter in the kitchen, hands on the counter top, looking at the coffee pot-even though he didn't drink coffee. She didn't know what was compelling her, but she headed straight for the kitchen and stood there, watching him. Shannon and Jet's muffled voices could be heard as Robot gazed at the dripping machine.

"You're really OK with me going?" Sparrow asked.

Robot's head tipped upward ever so slightly, before turning around, his joints squeaking. When he looked at her, his face was covered with tears.

 _But he was smiling._

"Do you know why I'm OK with it?" he asked. "I've tried so hard to make you happy here, but you're clearly not. And if this is the only thing that could possibly make you happy-going out there to save lives-" he took her and held her close. "I'm the proudest father in the world."

Sparrow's joints seized up at the sudden embrace. She was barely used to it when Shannon did it. To have one from Robot, it was startling. She couldn't move as she felt Robot's tears hit the top her head.

The only other person in the world who'd hugged her was a soldier who almost felt like a surrogate father to her.

The realization was shell shocking. The bed, the slippers, the screaming, the tears. He didn't just want a random invention back. He wanted a _daughter_ back.

 _"He loves you so Goddamn much..."_

The want. The want for love, for this, to have these hugs and this security, each and every day of her life, to be loved, came screeching from the core of her programming. And another realization. _I don't want to lose this._ Shannon came into the kitchen with the notepad, ready to dial the house phone, when she saw them. Robot, and Sparrow, in a tight embrace. And tears. In Sparrows eyes. Shannon wasn't even sure if Sparrow could cry. Tears welled up in her own eyes, and she could barely restrain her adoration of this site as she pressed a hand to her heart.

Eventually, Jet poked his head into the kitchen, and immediately slinked back out into the den, where Moza and Robbie were waiting impatiently. "So, what's going on? Is she going to stay?" asked Moza, having been give the run-down by Jet, who didn't care to keep secrets like that from children.

"Is Sparrow going to go hunting the bad guys again?" asked Robbie, zooming his airplane through the air with his extendable arms.

Jet leaned against the wall, a grin on his face. "Oh, I think she's had enough adventures playing superhero to last a lifetime. And now, you two should get to bed: I have to go find a swimwear store open late."

"Why, exactly?" asked Moza, skeptically.

"Because I left my trunks in Vegas. And as soon as your papa's done in there, I think I'm gonna end up going swimming..."

* * *

 _Originally Published December 31st, 2017_

 _Author's Note from the Story:_

For BigZmofo1996, who wanted a story about Jet and Sparrow.

And for anybody who wanted to see more of Sparrow's struggle with being home. Here's a real clincher: Her decision whether or not to stay home or go back to the army. Sorry I don't have more to say. I have an early start in the morning and I need to go to bed. Hope you enjoy!

 _Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?_ © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network


	6. Permanence

_Tick... tick... tick..._

Vile creations, clocks are. No one ever really pays attention to it until they are irritated by how slow they are going. A school clock in particular existed less like an informative device, and more like one more affliction for both student and teacher. There wasn't a kid alive who'd never looked at the brand-less two-handed white face on the wall at least once with the desire for it to magically read 3PM all the sudden.

But Sparrow Jones was probably the only student at that school who was particularly disturbed about how easily forgotten the ticking was, and how much it sounded like something much less harmless than a clock... As it was, it was all she could do to keep from blasting it to smithereens with her laser eyes.

Bubble gum popped in someone's mouth somewhere in the back, finally bringing her attention away from the timepiece. If this were twenty years ago, just having a stick of rubbery, bubbly goodness in your pocket would be grounds for an automatic detention. Nowadays, when teachers can't even get kids to stop texting in the middle of class, popping gum bubbles seemed innocent, and teachers never bothered to do anything about it. Sparrow even saw one teacher spit her own wad of gum out into a tissue before seventh period one day.

 _Seven hours, thirteen minutes, and thirty nine seconds left to go._

Not that Sparrow would really know what was normal for an American high school twenty years ago. She didn't even know what was normal for an American high school last year. The only kind of school she was familiar with was the kind where boys were permitted in one building, girls in another, and the girls were dressed head to toe in heavy cloth that made it hard to think on a hot day. And to do something as obnoxious as pop a bubble in the middle of lecture was grounds for being put in the corner and made to hold up large books for the rest of the day.

Sparrow had only ever known about what class in Iran was like through what the girls on the streets had told her. She never got to sit in on one herself. The army had thought about it: After it seemed like none of the civilians could tell she was a robot beneath all the cloth, it seemed like the next step after letting her play in the streets with the kids was to send her to school. She'd have the benefit of further socialization while protecting the students from potential terror attacks. In an orderly environment where females attaining an education was thought of as a privilege and not a right, Sparrow thought she would have done very well.

But not here. Not where kids put their feet up on the desks, chatted away about the next 15 minute musical sensation coming to play a concert in town, and how far was 'too far' on a Saturday night-whatever that meant. Sparrow couldn't sense of their vague implications sometimes. And this generally discouraged her from wanting to join in on the conversations taking place in between period bells.

Because she avoided conversation whenever possible, she got her work done before everybody else. It was a freshman's workload, and it was despicably easy. Robot and Shannon had thought about putting Sparrow in 8th grade with Moza, to give her someone to support her through the difficult transition into the school system. But Sparrow had been adamant that she didn't need someone to hold her hand, and Moza wasn't offended. Sparrow was fourteen years old, with a scholastic age of a four year college graduate. But she wouldn't be able to get a decent job anywhere without a diploma, and her parents were determined, for whatever reason, that she goes through the rigor of high school. Since she was a robot, she was able to test straight into the appropriate 9th grade.

Now it was just four years of hell to finish instead of five.

 _Four years, seven hours, twenty seven minutes, and two seconds to go,_ she thought, closing her eyes.

The classroom was even louder than normal, as their lanky, middle aged teacher was taking his sweet time in writing out the equations from last nights math assignments. His montone should have given something for Sparrow to relate to, but instead it was as much of an irritation for her as it was for anybody else. At least with the younger teachers, their energy and terrible attempts at humor were at least enough to get Sparrow, as well as other students, the faintest bit enthusiastic about what they were talking about.

Especially with history. Especially with war history.

Sparrow could not learn enough about the history of wars. Particularly American wars. It fascinated her to learn about their nation, one that was repeatedly upheavled over two centuries as more layers of bigotry and hypocrisy were revealed.

Of course, this was not news to anybody else at that school, who was smart enough to understand the implications, but simply didn't care. Even their history teacher seemed tired of repeating these ideas. Naturally, a robot during such a delicate time of discussion for AI rights would care. A robot who had spent most of her existence fighting to defend American values would care.

This is what Sparrow thought about when there was nothing left to do at her desk but look at the clock. Every minute that came between her and home, and bed, and the euphoric state of dreaming, was cruel. She never knew how good it was to dream until recently, when Robot disabled the programming that forced her to be awake 24/7. Even if it took her a while to come down from her paranoia over being put under a regular robot's sleep cycle, she did eventually get used to it. To truly sleep, not to zone out into the state of semi-conscious, fantastical dreaming that Sparrow reverted to on active duty that Robot referred to as 'torture'. When she was actually asleep, she couldn't control what she dreamed about, if she dreamed at all. And it was nice to let go.

 _Tick... tick..._

It was like the clock was whispering in her ear. A constant reminder of how stupid everything was.

That was, until she realized another whisper-an actual whisper, was being said. " _Pssst_ , robot girl."

Sparrow's eyes fluttered open. Nobody in front of her turned around, though Sparrow wasn't sure if they'd even heard him. The teacher kept his back to the class, and as he began to rattle off names of students to help him solve the presented equation, it was very apparent he hadn't heard the whisper, either.

" _Robot girl_ ," the masculine voice said again, this time slower. Sparrow couldn't misinterpret the words even if she wanted to. She felt her systems rev up in tension for a possible threat, but she had to force her body to remember to calm down-there was no threat here. Not to herself, not to anyone. And she was only going continue looking like a freak if she overreacted to everything.

"I have a name," Sparrow answered finally, not daring to turn her head more than twenty degrees to the right. From this angle, she could just barely make out the face of the boy who'd spoken. He was a pale skinned boy with bleach blond hair, and wearing a dirty bomber's jacket that was tight around his husky body.

"You... do?" the boy asked, making a face like someone had just blown off their exhaust right in his face. It was a dumb question, but Sparrow understood the confusion. Not a lot of humans were aware that robots often had names. Especially in the states, where robots were more commonly referred to by whatever the company that designed them called them, and that sometimes didn't get anymore generous than 'House droid #5.'

"Sparrow," the shebot said, not daring to raise her voice above a whisper, but speaking clearly enough to know that she wasn't being misunderstood. "That is my designation. I would prefer that you address me by this name, if you are insistent on speaking with me."

"O... Kay," the boy said in a nasily breath, rolling his eyes. "Sparrow. Um, how good are you with this math stuff?"

"Not bad," Sparrow shrugged, still not daring to turn around her seat completely, knowing the teacher could turn around any minute. "Considering that I am a robot."

"Right," the boy said, slowly. "So, did you get all the answers to last night's take home quiz?"

"Given that this is basic algebra, I think I'd make my brethren horrified if I did not."

"Is that a 'yes' or a 'no'?"

Sparrow sighed, finally turning in her chair to face him. "It is a yes," she said, throwing an arm over the back of her chair.

"Great," the boy said, smiling at her. "So, what's the answer to number three?"

"I can't give you that," Sparrow said, looking confused.

"Uh, why?"

"Because the instructions explicitly said: Quote: 'Any materials and resources, including the internet, may be used, but it is prohibited that you get help for the quiz, from peers or family members.' And I believe you and I are peers here."

"So?" the boy asked. "It's just one question. I filled out the rest, see?" the boy held up his sheet and displayed a worksheet with hardly legible math work, but filled out nevertheless. "I just forgot how to do the FOIL method crap."

"Hey, Carl," whispered another voice, this belonging to a tanned skin guy seated in the desk to her right. "If the lady doesn't wanna give out her answers, she don't have to."

The boy with the bomber jacket backed off, and Sparrow turned to look at the guy next to her. "Thank you," she said, feeling like he was the only one in this class with any common sense.

"No problem," the guy said with a smile. "You're the new girl, right?"

Sparrow nodded. Somehow, being referred to as the 'new girl' was nicer than the 'robot girl.' Plenty of kids could be considered new. It made her feel less targeted.

The guy thrust out his hand. "Name is Zane. And Sparrow is yours, right?"

Sparrow shook his hand, impressed that he said the unusual name with no question on his face, but thought it was a little odd that he'd been listening on the conversation between him and the bomber jacket boy for that long. "Why do kids insist that breaking simple rules that are explicitly laid down?"

Zane shrugged. "People are lazy, looking for the easy way out." The longer he at Sparrow, his smile slowly got wider. "I'm sorry if this is too fast, but has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?"

Sparrow grimaced, turning away from him. Though she hadn't heard it much, except from Shannon, Sparrow was well aware of how much her physical changes had had an effect on how humans saw her. Most humans weren't impressed, but she did have some admirers she never had before. Even if nobody at school until now had brought it to her face, she heard their whispers when she thought she was too far away.

 _That new girl. The robot without a nose. She's pretty-well, for a robot, I guess. Think she'll steal all the guys? Who knows.  
_  
However, 'beautiful' was not a word she ever thought she'd hear directed at herself. Beauty in itself was a word that made Sparrow only think of imagination. In her daydreams, where flowers spouted from sudden oases in the driest of deserts, and children never saw bloodshed, beauty abound. But not here, on regular old planet earth, where robots denied rights, and every waking moment was filled with the knowledge that somewhere in the world, innocent people were harmed for no reason. Beauty, as far as Sparrow was concerned, was not a word that belonged to the real world.

Certainly not from a human to a robot. Sparrow felt her defense mode slowly start to lower under the human's honest gaze. "No... but you mean that?"

"What reason do I have to lie?" whispered Zane, his voice deeper with the lower he dropped his voice. Such deep red that made Sparrow certain that if there was actually any telltale difference between 'boy' and guy', when referring to males, and this was certainly, a 'guy'. Maybe even a 'man.'

Zane flipped open his scratched up notebook and jotted something down. For a second, Sparrow thought that he was trying to make a desperate attempt at looking like he was taking notes, despite the fact that she was fairly certain nobody in her line of sight had done so all semester. When he was done, he ripped half of the page out, folded it and handed it out to her. "For you," he said.

Sparrow took the note, practically frozen for a second before pulling it towards her. "What's this?"

"My number," Zane said. "For you to call."

Almost on cue, the bell that signaled the end of the period sounded, and students erupted from their seats before Sparrow could blink twice. The torturous voice of the bored human teacher was washed away by the tidal way of teenage voices and the passing period music trickling in from the hallway. "S-sure!" the shebot replied, watching Zane nod, pick up his notebook, and head out the door.

Sparrow lagged behind, like she always did-not caring to set off her trauma by getting stuck in a wall of human bodies. She sat at her desk and waited for the last of the humans in her column of desks to have left before carefully opening up the note. And all the while, there was a genuine smile spreading onto her face.

That smile, however, was short lived, once she read the entirety of what was written on the slip of paper. Almost immediately, she defaulted back to a frown, and lost track of time-so much so that the touch of a human hand nearly sent her flying to the back wall. "Ms. Jones, don't you have another class to get to?"

Sparrow almost felt bad for thinking so harshly of the human's monotone, for a soothing voice was the one that spoke to her now. She looked up at him and nodded. "Yeah... I do."

When the shebot got home that day, she had made a decision. And as much as it was going to ruin their happy home, Sparrow grew more and more determined with every step she took closer to the door that she was making the right choice.

Coming into the kitchen to look for her father, the man responsible for all of this-her life, what it was now-she was greeted by the sight of Moza, propped up on a chair, while Robot ran a comb carefully through her hair.

Curious, but not enough to ask about it, she dove straight for the topic on her mind as soon as she and the tall male robot made eye contact. "Robot, we need to talk."

"In a minute, Sparrow," Robot told her calmly. "I am checking Moza's scalp for lice."

"I don't have any, _for the last time_ ," Moza shouted. "I'm positive!"

"We can never be too certain," Robot responded. "And I will not hear the end of it from Shannon if I let an infestation take a hold of this house."

"He's had me sitting here since I came home!" Moza shouted at Sparrow. "An entire hour! I should have tore up that letter from school as soon as I saw it on the coffee table," she added under her breath.

"You humans don't make any sense to me," Robbie said, wandering in from the kitchen, claws covered in finger paint. "If you're worried about bugs, just shave your heads!"

" _I don't have bugs."_ Moza said between gritted teeth.

"Well, someone at that school does. And they are one of the most contagious diseases known to the human race," Robot said to Moza, putting the comb away for a minute to put his hands on his hips. "Right after the common cold and social media awareness challenges."

"Unbelievable," the teenager sighed, slapping her forehead as Robot went back to work on her head.

"Being a robot sure looks cool right now," Robbie mocked. "Doesn't it?"

"Don't get cocky, Robbie, you're next in the chair after I am done with Moza," Robot said, pointing the comb at him.

"But I don't even have hair!" Robbie complained.

"No, but lice can live in the artificial fibers of our clothes," Robot told him.

Robbie looked at his baggy shirt and shorts that he wore to school earlier that day, while Moza snickered. " _Gee wiz, bein' a robutt shure looks kewl right about naw, doesn't it?_ "

Robot pulled the comb away at last and laid it down on the small foldable table to his left. "Well, you're clean, as far as I can determine. But until the infestation has been officially cleared by the school," he said, reaching into his suit pocket, "I am going to have to insist that you wear this protective head-covering."

He produced a pink shower cap with yellow flowers on it. Moza's mouth dropped open, and she looked from Robbie, to Robot, back to the cap. "I think I'd rather shave my head."

"OH, OH, I wanna help!" Robbie said, frantically waving his arm in the air to no one in particular. "I just found a nose-hair trimmer from the trash behind the house, but I'm sure it works on head hair, too!"

"Robot," Sparrow started again, "this matter cannot be delayed from discussion-"

"-Please, Sparrow, unless it's an emergency, it's going to have to wait until I look over Robbie," Robot said, sounding sympathetic as he turned away from her, picking up his rascally son and plopping him down onto the bench. In turn, Robbie 'humphed' and crossed his arms, as Robot used his extended magnifying eyes to check Robbie's pant leg in his hands.

"But it's not-" Sparrow sputtered, grabbing her head. The frustration was overwhelming. It was like trying to shout in the middle of an attack, but nothing of the sort was going on here. She was drowned out for the sake of being drowned out. Because she was irrelevant. Because in another universe, she was just the overreacting teenage daughter. And she was sick of it. "Dammit, dad!"

Robot turned around, and he gaped at her. Robbie watched his father drop his leg and turned to look at her too. Even Moza gave her a queer look.

Sparrow had been home for months now. Robot had changed her sheets, did her reprogramming, gave her oil, and did pretty much everything one would expect out of a father. But somehow, still, she had never referred to him as anything else but 'Robot', if she ever called him anything. To hear her call him 'dad' rang out with such falseness that everybody couldn't help but be stunned into silence by it.

In that sense, it worked in Sparrow's favor. Robot stood erect, and pulled his hands away from Robbie. "You have my attention now, Sparrow. What is it?"

"This entire mission, to integrate with humans or whatever?" she said, "Is... pointless."

Robot looked dumbstruck, the break in her voice upon saying that last word was so unlike her. "What are you saying?"

"That I'm not going back to school," she said, letting her new backpack fall from her outstretched hand to the floor for emphasis. "I'm done with this."

The age lines on Robot's face deepened. Moza turned to Robbie and little automaton whispered something like "is she allowed to do that?" in Moza's ear. In response, Moza whispered something back about Robbie returning to his finger paints, and obediently, he did.

Robot wished he didn't know what the problem was, but he did. Sparrow could do the work. Her academics would flourish even if she was put in advanced placement classes. It was the socialization that was causing trouble. He got close, and deciding it was one of those rare moments he could touch her, let his hands rest on her shoulders.

"Sparrow, I realize that it is difficult, but you can't give up now. I wanted to leave too, until I made some friends," he insisted, giving a weak smile. "You just have to hold on a little longer, trust me."

" _How_ much longer?" Sparrow said, voice desperate. "It's been months, and nobody's extended the most remote gesture of kindness except this boy who gave me his note," she said, producing a paper from her pocket.

Robot blinked. "A boy gave you his number?"

"No way!" Moza shouted, leaping from the chair and rushing over to Robot's shoulder. "A guy _hit_ on you?"

Before the shebot could explain, Robot plucked the paper wad out of Sparrow's pincers and unfolded it. He took a moment for his eyes to run over the paper before taking on a confused expression. "Well, there seems nothing wrong with this?"

"Let me see!" Moza insisted, jumping up and down to try and read the note from Robot's arm level.

Robot turned the note down so Moza could read it. "It's just a note that says _call me if you want a good ti-"_

It was as if saying it out loud forced Robot's mind to put the slang to its factual meaning. He froze in place, and Moza gasped. Both looked at each other, not sure whether to be more shocked at the suggestion itself, or that each other knew exactly what it meant.

Robot didn't have to ask if Sparrow understood what it meant, either, as the contempt for the note was written on her usually stoic face. And it didn't take a super-smart computer to figure out that this note had been the tipping point.

Robot stuffed the paper in his mouth and spat it back out in the form of micro paper shreds. Then he turned to Moza and pointed: "First off, I am not at all happy that you even know what that means, young lady."

To this, Moza shrugged. "Sorry for being a child of the world."

"And you:" he turned to Sparrow. "This shouldn't... this doesn't... I... I too..." But when he took in the sight of her, the robot girl with the purple scarf covering her head, the humiliation on her face, he couldn't form the words. It was like swallowing a mouthful of cotton.

Sparrow had a point. Robot couldn't just know that things were going to get better for her eventually, just because they had gotten better for him. They may have been father and child, but their circumstances had been very different. And even though neither of them had started the process of integration until high school, for Sparrow, there was a whole new ring of culture that she needed to assimilate to.

From the moment she had woken up in her room, the room Robot had had ready for her for 13 years, Sparrow had wanted to leave. But it wasn't until the recent visit with Robot's little brother and the kid's uncle, Jet, that the discussion of going back to the war had reached a head. Sparrow had expressed a desperate need to get back to the place from which she was most familiar, the place where she felt the most useful. And as much as it had broken his heart, Robot had been ready to give her what she needed, by letting her go. Sparrow's only reasons for staying after that point was seeing how much pain it was causing this other unit to lose the robot that they still considered their child. And from deep, deep within her, there was a desire to be able to feel that connection back to him again. She believed, maybe with some time, she could indeed rebuild that which had been destroyed.

Almost two months after that night, Sparrow had definitely grown to trust Robot more, but it was still hard to tell if it was coming from a place out of genuine affection, or from a respect she had for his dedication to her. Either way, it gave her the courage to approach him about the truth: That she'd never fit into this place.

Robot remembered like it was yesterday, the doubt that he would ever find a way to make school work for him, and the increasing pressure to do just that. But it had all worked out in the end. Despite his initial doubt and even reluctance to try, Robot _had_ managed to make a place for himself among the humans, he daresay pretty darn well, too. With dozens of acquaintances, four core friends, and even a... girlfriend? Domestic partner? Whatever Shannon was to him, it was clearly special.

Robot's mission had been well and above successful, so he was sure his daughter would have success with her own, if only time would work the same magic for her that it did for him.

But there was one major difference between Sparrow and himself at that age: Robot had been sheltered. Sparrow had been anything but. Robot had been overwhelmed by school because it was more than he'd ever been exposed to before. For Sparrow, it was underwhelming. Tedious. Stupid. Well, Robot had thought school was stupid too, but what kid didn't? As much as Robot had loved to talk about this superiority at that age, the things that he thought were stupid about school were about the same as any other kid.

But Sparrow had seen far more than Robot had ever seen at that age. She'd seen the very worst humanity had to offer, and a ton of it. Humans were the reason she lived the ballistic life of a solider. She had so many reasons to hate people, and yet she put herself on the line to save not only the soldier she had been assigned to back up, but the civilians she'd been assigned to ignore. She volunteered herself to rescue people she owed nothing to. She was so very deserving of a life of normality after all this time, and yet she was simultaneously worthy of so much more.

She and Robot were too different now. And he was now considering the possibility that even if she tried as hard as she did, that she'd never achieve integration.

All at once, he felt his heart breaking again. He was already trying to remember the phone number of that organization that sends robots overseas when he said: "Does this mean you're leaving us?" he asked, his voice cracking. "You're really leaving us this time?"

"Wha-?" Sparrow started. "No... No, I mean, I don't want to." She looked up and down, as if the words would be written somewhere within eyesight. Nobody had ever tried so hard to make her happy. She'd never be able to reject that kindness. Even if she never really knew if she'd ever love Robot at this point, she was determined to give him happiness in return. "I don't want to leave," she started again. "It's just that I think it's too late for me. I haven't made any progress towards immersion with the humans at the high school level, and I truly don't think I ever will. I'm afraid this is a mission that I will fail at, no matter what I do. I'm not going back to the war, but I'm not going back there, either. If this means you're gonna throw me out or something, that's fine. I-I'll get a job, I'll work a factory. But I'm not gonna pretend to be something I'm not. Not anymore."

Even though his eyes shimmered when she said she didn't want to leave there was such defeat in her voice at this confession that it tore down Robot all over again. She wasn't making excuses. She was seriously at a loss. There was no use with arguing with a child who was well into an adult, mentally. "Well, I'm absolutely not throwing you out," Robot said, slowly but firmly. "But if you don't go to school, what will you do?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I was hoping you would know."

Robot swallowed hard. Here was one of those precious moments when Robot had to produce an answer from thin air, just because he was the adult in this situation. How he resented every time he put his own parents on the spot with difficult questions, now that it was his turn. He sighed. "We'll talk about this tomorrow morning. Shannon will probably have some ideas."

"Did I hear my name?" said a new female voice from the hallway. A beat or two later, a short haired, lanky woman in a business suit came into the door, her arms weighed down by groceries. Nothing apparently seemed out of place about three of her four family members standing in the kitchen together, or the depressed look on their faces. But apparently, the medical supplies laid out on the fold out table did seem strange enough for Shannon to ask about. "What's all that?"

"The middle school sent out a letter saying some of the kids have lice," explained Robbie casually, wandering back into the kitchen with a towel to dry his hands, which were still stained from lack of washing.

"LICE?" Shannon dropped the groceries on the floor, contents spilling everywhere, and yanked Robot forward to look at her scalp. "Check me, now!"

"Calm down, mom. Nobody has it. Robot already checked me," explained Moza. "Honestly, you guys are making too big a deal over this."

"Yeah, well explain that when you're spending weeks shampooing the furniture!" Shannon shouted.

"Moza's right, Shannon," Robot told her. "If she's clean, it's unlikely to have spread anywhere else." He let go of Shannon's hair part and let it fall back into place. "Best to spend your energy contemplating other matters of interest."

Shannon sighed, running her hands through her long bangs. "I guess you're right. Moza, hand me that pack of sausages that rolled by the sink, I'll start up the grill outside."

As Shannon took the groceries for the humans' dinner to the backyard, Robot gently shut the door behind her, and revealed a terrified expression he'd been holding back. "Children, we have a problem."

"I know," Moza said, "Mom got the stupid Horseradish mustard instead of the good stuff." The girl grimaced at the bottle from the torn-up grocery bag.

"No," Robot said, grimly. "Your mother has lice. I saw the nits when she lifted her hair."

"WHAT?" Moza, Robbie and Sparrow all said at the same time.

"But how could you not say anything?!" Robbie shouted.

" _Shuush!_ She'll hear you!" Robot said, waving his arms to motion them to quiet down. "I-I don't know, I was too afraid to say anything. You know how she gets about these things!"

"Robot, mom is going to _freak_ when she finds out," Moza said, "Probably worse when she finds out _you didn't tell her_!"

"I know, I know, I know! Dad unit screws up yet again!" Robot said, kicking the floor. "I just couldn't stand the thought of her hysterics! Not now!"

"What are you going to do?" Sparrow asked.

Robot winced. "I really wish you would stop asking me that today." He opened his eyes and looked helplessly at his kids. "Well, kids, do _you_ have any ideas about how I shall remedy this situation?"

The kids stood around, looking at each other awkwardly, before Moza snatched the shower cap that she'd rejected earlier from Robbie's clasp and slapped it onto her head. "Welp, I'm gonna go live underground for the next two years. Either of you wanna come?"

"Is there still wifi down there?" asked Robbie, trotting along after her as she left the kitchen.

Sparrow unit fell asleep, thinking about the big, empty void that was her future. Before, when she was on the front lines, she had never had to think that much about what tomorrow meant to her. Everything was day-to-day, because as a machine made to protect soldiers, it was never guaranteed that she'd even have a tomorrow. If she had never been taken away, if she had just remained Trixie Jones, the mission to assimilate with the other girls may have made sense to her. She would finish school, graduate, get a job, and maybe even find something to do to make herself useful in her existence as a civilian.

But by refusing to keep pretending that time could turn her back into Trixie, she was refusing all the plans that came with that life. And now, with no possibility that she would be taken out in the blink of an eye by a powerful enough weapon, there was just time. So much time, and no meaning to any of it. Sparrow of the war had a purpose. Trixie had a purpose. Whatever she was now, was insignificant. It ached in such a surprising and overwhelming way that Sparrow silently cried herself to sleep. She didn't know that the sheer sensation of nothingness could hurt so much, until she shook and sobbed herself into sleep mode.

Sparrow woke the next morning-at least what she thought was morning-to the sound of a woman's voice piercing through the metal plated walls of their home.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I HAVE LICE?"

The teenage robot rolled over in her twin sized bed, her internal clock flashing before her now dried eyes. 3:49 am.

 _Well, that lasted long,_ she thought sarcastically, pushing herself out of bed as Shannon's voice trailed from the bedroom across the hall to downstairs, accompanied by two frantic set of footsteps. Just as she expected, Moza and Robbie were peeking out of their own rooms, looking at each other with gritted teeth.

"Shouldda started digging that hole last night," Robbie whispered loudly to Moza.

"We better go see if there's anything we can do for them," Moza said reluctantly, shutting her bedroom door behind her, and gesturing for Sparrow to follow.

The kids timidly climbed the steps downstairs, following the bright white light of the kitchen, where they witnessed their robotic father bending their mother over the sink, in a way that made all three kids fear that their mother was getting drowned.

But it was soon obvious that this was not what was happening. In fact, every time Shannon came back up from the water for air, she was screaming profanities, and they seemed to be directed at the poor robot man. The closer the kids got, they could see it wasn't even Robot who was forcing her under the water. Shannon was forcefully scrubbing her head with the wooden handled brush Sparrow recognized as the floor scrubber Robot kept under the sink. Robot wasn't trying to assist her as much as he seemed to be trying to keep her from harming herself.

"Shannon-Shannon!" Robot shouted, trying to get her to hear from beneath the running water. "Y-you're overreacting again, Please stop!"

"You had the nerve," she sputtered, mouth half full of water as she remained under the tap, "Not to tell me I had head lice!"

"Because I knew you would react this way!" Robot reasoned. "Please, Shannon, I've got the medicated shampoo upstairs already, just let me help you before you hurt yourself!"

"No, Robot, it's too late," she said, reaching blindly and turning off the water as she was still bent, dropping the scrubber, sounding mournful. "You're gonna have to shave it all off."

Robbie tentatively raised his hand. "Can I-"

"NO you're not helping!" Moza shouted to silence his offer.

"Dearest, don't you think that's a bit drastic?" asked Robot, trying to help Shannon rinse. In her desperation, she'd grabbed the dish soap, and her hair was still full of suds.

"Yeah, mom," Moza said, yawning a little. "You really wanna show up bald to your own wedding?"

"My WHAT?" Shannon shouted. Her head snapped upward, smacking the sink head. Robot winced, coming to comfort her as she rubbed the back of her head.

She patted his hand and coughed into her fist to show that she was alright, before lowing her hand from her aching head, inspecting it for blood, and lowering it to her side. "What did you just say?" she asked, making eye contact with Moza.

The girl in the _Nirvana_ sleep shirt suddenly snapped fully awake, having realized what she had just said, and turned as pale as paper. "Uh..."

Robot's eye was twitching. "Moza... how... what... why...?"

The short, human teen looked genuinely apologetic. "I'm sorry, look! I've... sort of suspected something like this was going to happen eventually, and then this _blabbermouth_ ," she said, pointing to Robbie, "Told me Robot had practiced the proposal on him."

Robot turned to Robbie too. "Robbie! How could you? What did I tell you about the bro-code?"

Robbie twisted the toe of his footy pajamas into the floor, not meeting his gaze. "Uhhh... the one that says male units have to keep each other's secrets, no matter what?"

"YES, THAT ONE!" Robot shouted, yanking on his antennae. "What happened to that?"

"I guess I forgot," Robbie said, lip quivering. "I'm sorry."

Moza slapped her forehead. "No, no, it's my fault. I should've kept my mouth shut. But Robot," she said to the machine she looked up to, "I thought you would have done it by now."

"Wait," said Shannon, hair dripping wet. She slowly turned on her heels and pointed to Robot. "You..."

Robot had gone completely still, erect like a statue, paralyzed with the pressure of this confrontation. "Yes. I was going to ask you to marry me."

Shannon was still breathing so hard from the exertion of trying to rid herself from hair bugs, her chest was visibly rising and falling. "For-for how long?"

"When you told me you were leaving to find..." Robot gestured to Sparrow without saying her name, "... I knew then that you were the one."

An unbearable silence filled the room until it was broken by the gentle entrance of chuckles. It was so quiet it took a moment for everyone to realize they were coming from Robbie.

"Great, we broke 'em," Moza said, rolling her eyes. "And I thought I was going to be the first one around her to lose their mind."

Robbie continued laughing, his pale painted face turning rosy with delight. "It's just so coincidental," he finally explained. "Shannon was gonna ask dad to marry _her._ They were both planning on doing the same thing to each other! Oh, the coincidence!

A crack sounded. Robot's left eye lens shattered out of nowhere, his right eye twitching worse than ever. "S-S-She... p-p-propose... me?"

"Stand back, the man's gonna faint!" Moza shouted, pushing Robbie out of his father's shadow.

"Shannon, is this true?" Robot said, articulating every syllable with emotion. "Were you going to propose to me, too?"

The skinny, damp woman with the metal leg standing in his kitchen somehow never looked so delicate. "Yes, I was." She groaned. "Listen, it was a long time coming, a-and I know how screwed up the world is right now, with robots and humans. I-I thought there might have been a reason you were talking so long. I started thinking," she shrugged. "Maybe I should do it."

"But. Why didn't you go through with it?" asked Robot, sounding hurt.

"Well, why didn't _you_?!" she said. "You're the man! Hello!"

"WOULD YOU TWO STOP-!" shouted Sparrow out of nowhere. "Your bickering. This is pathetic. Robot, there's a bouquet of aluminum roses for you in the push-in wall in the cabinet to your left, behind the dishes," she said, pointing in the direction she was speaking of. "Shannon, your diamond ring is in Robot's chest cavity next to his pistons." As she said this, she pointed to her own chest, to show where the ring would be inside of Robot. "Over a hundred-thousand men and women die everyday around the world, so many of them before they ever get the chance to say 'I love you'-there's absolutely no sense in putting it off for this long when everybody knows you both know you feel the same way about each other."

The room was quiet again, save for the constant little hum of the electrical, steely plated home. Robot and Shannon looked at each other, unsure, slowly waiting for the other to make the first move. It ended up being Robot who did just that, carefully moving over to the cabinet above the stove, moving white dishes over with a few clanks before finding the false backboard-sliding it sideways. From the cabinet he brought out exactly what Sparrow had said-twelve bits of dense aluminum intricately folded in the shape of roses, likely by a professional artist. Without a word, he returned to Shannon's side, put the bouquet down on the kitchen island, and unbuttoned his sleep shirt, and unlatched his chest cavity. Shannon bent down and looked inside, quickly finding what she was looking for with a gasp.

Moza and Robbie got close as Shannon produced a flat silver band with what appeared to be real diamonds laced into the front.

"Oooo," Moza cooed.

"Shiny," Robbie admired.

"Sparrow, how did you know about these?" asked Robot, his deep computer voice a whisper with amazement as he shut his chest and re-buttoned his shirt.

"I didn't spend thirteen years in a country plagued by terrorism to not become trained to know when to detect when things are planted where they are not supposed to be," Sparrow explained, neither proud nor embarrassed. "I've discovered the location of five home-made bombs and defused countless others. You'll never hide anything in this household without me knowing about it. I also know Robbie throws his dirty cups under the bed and Moza is keeping a picture of Kellin Quinn in his underwear in her pillow case."

" _Sparrow!_ " Moza shouted, looking horrified.

"I was just... seeing how mold grows," Robbie said, shyly, kicking the floor with his toe.

Both parents made fleeting disappointed looks at the kids, but quickly turned their attention back to Sparrow, who had began leaving the kitchen and for the stairs. Robot and Shannon followed her back into the living room, with Moza and Robbie trailing soon behind. Neither woman nor grown automaton looked like they knew whether to be the first to speak, and since Robot had made the first move for his engagement present, it was Shannon who sputtered out words first. "Sparrow... I don't know what to say."

Sparrow was already two steps up the stairs when she turned to face them. "About what?" she asked.

"T-the speech you just made," Robot sputtered, "It was so true. It was beautiful."

Beautiful. There that word was again. It took all her strength to hold back a snort. Truth and beauty didn't go together. Not in the real world, anyway. "I suppose," Sparrow said, sounding empty.

"Listen," Shannon said, rubbing the back of her neck, which was still sopping wet. "Before we... um... woke you up, uh, Robot and I were talking about maybe getting you signed up for a rescue organization here in the state."

Sparrow turned her whole body around for this, eyes wide. "Really?"

"There are tons of places you could work," Robot said. "As it turns out, some of them even work like full time jobs. And your experience in the military could make you very valuable to them."

Sparrow grasped the railing on the stairs tightly. "Valuable..." she said, quietly.

"It's what you wanted, right?" asked Shannon.

Sparrow thought about it for a moment. "I suppose." She looked them in the eyes. "Were you two really never going to pop the question if I hadn't done that?"

Shannon and Robot looked at each other, mouths agape. They both knew the answer, but were reluctant to say so. It was Robot who spoke: "I... guess we've just been living together this way for so long now. To put a label on it, to get married, makes it suddenly so real." He looked at the woman he so clearly loved. "I was afraid that if I proposed, it may ruin everything."

Shannon's eyes shimmered. "Oh, Robot..." she said, quickly dabbing her eyes with the back of her hands. "Married or not, we're still a family, robots and humans united under one roof-if that's not a miracle, I don't know what is."

That last word made Robot blink a few times. Like he'd never put that word and his life together. "Yes... a miracle." His eyes fell to the floor. "It would be a tragedy to waste something like that." Without further warning, he got down on one knee, and took her right hand. "Shannon Westerburg-"

"WAIT, don't do this now!" the woman said, snatching her hand back.

Robot looked so hurt again. "Wha-Why not?"

"I'm not gonna get proposed to, sopping wet in my PJs," she shouted, sweeping her fingers through her damp hair, "With a head full of bugs!"

Sparrow cocked her head to the side. "Hmm. For someone who has lice, you haven't been scratching very much," she noticed, calmly stepping off the stairs and approaching Shannon. "I've had to check soldiers for lice on the daily. May I?"

Cautiously, Shannon obliged, and bent forward a little so Sparrow could inspect her hair. The shebot combed through sections of Shannon's hair until she found what she was looking for-and produced a white-flaked hand. "This isn't lice, Robot, this is dandruff." Her tough expression turning a bit disgusted as she dumped the white flakes onto the floor. "Severe dandruff."

"Gross!" Moza said, taking a step back. "Why is that somehow worse?"

"Dandruff? Are you kidding me?" Shannon shouted, reeling back up and looking at Robot. The poor automaton was at a loss. " _How_ did you get those mixed up?" she asked, legitimately confused.

"I uh, don't know," Robot said, looking humiliated. "I observed white flakes and I assumed... I guess that I do not know what a real case of head lice looks like, after all."

"Wait a minute," Robbie said, hopping up and down joyously. "I just figured something out! Don't you guys see it?"

"What?" asked Moza. "That we need some _Head and Shoulders_ in this house?"

"No!" He pointed to both of his parents. "Dad unit was so afraid that Shannon unit was going to freak out over the lice that he got as afraid of the lice as she did, even though he doesn't even have hair! But who's the one who usually gets over afraid about thing to begin with?"

Everybody else turned and gasped. "Robot!"

"Exactly!" Robbie said, delighted by his correct observation. "Which means that at some point, Shannon started acting like _Dad_ as well."

Robot was speechless, once again in disbelief of his son's incredible perception, like back when he had first noticed Robot loved Shannon more than a typical robot and human relationship. Meanwhile Shannon raked through her hair, more grossed out than afraid now. "He's gonna make one hell of a psychologist, one day," she said to his father.

"Wow," Moza nodded, "Robbie's right. You two have become like two sides of the same coin."

"Heh," Shannon said, an awkward smile breaking across her face, "I guess we are."

Robot wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled he close, unafraid of the water drip down her bangs. "All the more reason that we belong together."

"Ew," said Moza again, slapping her hands over her eyes. "OK, I draw the line at parental affection, I'm going back to bed." She lowered her hand and passed Sparrow to get to the stairs. "Come on, little Freud."

Obediently, Robbie trotted on after, yawning as he followed.

Then it was just Robot, Shannon and Sparrow. And for the first time, Robot felt like he truly was in the presence of another adult, when facing his daughter. "Thank you, Sparrow," he said, quietly.

Thank-yous were rare where Sparrow was from. She could have saved a soldier's life, but if she wasn't human, why did she deserve thanks? That was her job, wasn't it? Only when sometimes helping civilians in Iran did she ever get any thanks. But it wasn't Robot's fault that she was wary about gratefulness. So much that was wrong with her wasn't his fault at all, and it hurt to think that she didn't know how to articulate this all to him without turning into a blubbering mess. "You're welcome," she said, trying her hardest to insert warmth into her voice.

She knew the connection between she and her father could be rebuilt. She already trusted him more than she ever thought she would-Shannon, too. Maybe, maybe he did know what he was talking about, with how time could make even a robot in an all human school fit in. Maybe she'd never be Trixie again, but Sparrow the regular, teenage girl wasn't doomed.

Shannon noticed Sparrow's lingering. "What's wrong?"

"Do you suppose," Sparrow started, "That I could keep attending high school-just for a little longer-but that I could do volunteering as well?"

"Oh! That sounds... fine. We just need to find one that works around school hours, right Robot?" Shannon asked.

"D-Definitely," he answered. "I could drive you back and forth in the afternoons, and Shannon on the weekends."

Sparrow nodded silently, consideration making her hardened expression turn soft, and making her so very pretty, just then. "Goodnight, then."

"Goodnight," said Shannon.

"Good-goodnight!" Robot stammered.

Sparrow kept the image of human and robot man in her mind as she ascended the stairs. She couldn't bare to look at them once more that night, least she start to cry right there-and nobody alive was going to see what it looked like when she cried. Not yet. She wasn't ready to expose her most vulnerable state, yet.

These people, my _parents_. Two months and some weeks had made her care for these two unlike she'd cared for anybody else before. She had been so hesitant to embrace them, because in the back of her head was a constant warning that happiness for her was a temporary emotion, and to lose someone truly beloved would destroy her from the inside out. As useless as a broken toaster in the desert.

But every night for almost a season, she climbed these same stairs. She tucked herself into this same bed. She laid her head down on this same pillow. She could finally accept that, short of an apocalypse, that this wasn't going away, and that she wasn't, either. All those days that she'd sat hating the clock in class, she'd been getting a little more settled in. Time was slowly giving her permanence.

Maybe she had had a right to be afraid of that note from Zane. There was still so much she had to understand about high school, especially teenagers themselves. But the idea that even if she never truly assimilated, that she could at least be doing some good in the world, made the painful emptiness deep within her start to shrink.

 _This is my life, and I'm going to live it the way that I want to._ And now that she could finally unlock her heart, she wanted to experience everything. Love included.

* * *

So this fic takes place before "Unwritten" and "Thanksgiving", but after "Bird with Two Homes". I forgot I wrote this, but I guess it's good enough to post. I had wanted to do a specific story detailing the moment that Robot and Shannon actually get engaged, and Sparrow's experiences at school, and this happened. IDK if the revelation that they're getting marired is too downplayed, but I felt like if they'd been living together like this for years as an unofficial family, than it would be kind of quiet and sweet as opposed to being a big deal (the wedding itself, on the other hand, would have a lot more hype and expectation around it.)

It's almost 2019, trying to get all the old stuff posted and gear up for new stuff. xP Hope you like it.

 _Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?_ © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network


	7. Revisiting Polyneux

"You know why she won't be completely safe anywhere, Robot," said Shannon.

Robot rested his elbow on the locked steering wheel and rubbed his head. He and the adult Shannon sitting next to him in the passenger's seat had spent two workdays and a Sunday trying to find an alternative school for Moza-one where the forces against them could not find her. After a failed attempt at kidnapping the thirteen year old from her current school, Shannon found it necessary to look into a place for her to transfer, despite being so close to her junior high graduation. But finding an inconspicuous school within reasonable distance of their current living place was proving harder than they thought. Private school was just too expensive, and the idea of homeschooling Moza sent shudders through Robot's metallic skeleton. Though he may have been more than capable of being an instructor in all subjects to the girl, perhaps even more equipped than the actual instructors in certain subjects, denying her daily social interaction with peers in a way like Robot was once denied himself was a cruel and unusual punishment for the teen who had done nothing wrong.

"Well, I believe it is time that you shared your ideas," said Robot, with a tinge of ice on his computerized voice, "Because I'm out of 'em."

Shannon tapped her lap and turned her head to gaze out the window. Though Robot refused to look at her directly, her body language gave off the distinct impression that she, indeed, had an idea, but was too shy to share it. Realizing this, Robot allowed himself to turn to look at her, full on.

Seated before the oncoming sunset, her face was dark, but outlined in gold. "There is one we haven't discussed…"

Robot was surprised with himself that it took him that long to realize which school she was thinking of. His mouth feel ajar slowly. "… Oh, no, you are not thinking of Polyneux, are you?"

"Why not?" Shannon asked, as if she was suggesting something as frivolous as them see a movie before heading home. "We made it out OK."

"'Made it out OK' is an understatement if I ever observed one," Robot said, emphasizing every syllable. "We are talking about a thirteen year old girl who happens to be 10 percent metal-and Polyneux is the epitome of conformist run schools, Shannon..."

"Was, Robot," Shannon corrected in a motherly firm tone. "A lot of things have changed. I mean, the worst of the staff had to be gone by the time Madman retired. And you don't really think they could hire somebody worse to take his place, do you?"

Robot sat and thought for a moment. He never took the time out to consider what it might like at Polyneux without that old tyrant running the place. And he had to admit he was curious about Madman's replacement…

"It's worth an investigative look."

The next day, as he drove through the familiar neighborhoods, even taking some of the streets that their school bus used to take, Robot experienced a wave of anticipation and fear—the same kind that he'd get every morning before school. But his mission as a student there was long complete. Now he was coming back, just for a visit. So why was he so nervous?

Even pulling up close to the campus of their former school, something didn't feel right. Or at least the sense of familiarity that Robot had expected to experience upon getting this close did not wash over him. Shannon, apparently, felt the same way, and pointed to the unfamiliar building ahead of them as the cause.

"Wait a minute, I checked the website this morning," she said, "It has to be open!"

After a moment to process his visual input, Robot allowed himself to speak. "It is. They rebuilt it."

The building that towered above them was at least twice the size of Polyneux when they both attended. It took him a moment to realize that it was the same building, but several floors had been added to the already 4 story school, making it slightly resemble the school from the Wayside books, but consuming a block outward as well.

"It's huge," Shannon said in a deep exhale, eyes running up to the roof so high that it would make church steeples feel inadequate.

"If my deduction is correct, there must have been an even greater demand for a school," Robot said. "So they continued to add to it."

Polyneux was always a filter-in school from all the neighboring, much smaller elementary schools. But instead of creating several different middle schools in the district, Polyneux, which sat in the exact center of many elementary schools in the tiny East Coast county, became a district upon itself. Robot and his peers would have assumed that that problem would have been corrected after several different years, but it seemed like the school board didn't mind slapping several more floors to the already massive school.

"How are the kids even supposed to learn how to get around here?" Shannon asked as she stepped out of the car, not really expecting an answer from her robotic company.

How terrifying it must have been to be a sixth grader, coming here from one of the smaller private elementary schools, especially if he was the only one in his class transferring in. Robot peered out the window but couldn't even see in his line of sight where the building ended. Madness! It was like a hospital!

"I suppose that would be the main entrance, then," Robot said, pointing to an area of the campus he gratefully remembered, seemingly unchanged but for some benches placed out front.

At least the inside of the school itself looked the same as when they left it—the obnoxious pink and yellow paint-job they gave it before they left was just starting to peel away.

But when they turned the corner, they saw that two painters on a ladder were coloring the pink walls in thick layers of white. Robot heard Shannon sigh, but did not look at her to confirm her disapproval.

As they identified signs pointing to the main office, which, after over a decade of reconstruction had been relocated far away from the general entrance, much to Shannon's further dismay, the visitors were soon drowned in a sea of indistinguishable black shirts and dark gray slacks.

"Well," Robot said, just loud enough to be heard by her robotic companion over the sea of teenage chatter, "At least Moza will not be easily spotted."

"There has to be at least ten thousand kids here!" Shannon exclaimed.

"Grossly inaccurate," Robot scoffed at her mathematical guessing. "A building this size could only hold five thousand or so, and even then, that would be overcrowding."

But that conclusion didn't set well for his nerves, either. As the sea of teenagers began to clear way enough for Robot to regain his personal space, he picked up his strike and kept shoulder to shoulder with Shannon, determined like she were his child not to let her out of his sight for an instant.

Robot grabbed onto Shannon's jacket, uneasy. "I do not like the students here, Shannon. They do not seem to respect our presence..."

Shannon looked like she couldn't believe what she had just heard. "That's new for you?"

Robot understood quickly what she meant. "Well, I'm used to the occasional scoff or scream, but they do not seem to simply glare at us. I feel as though somehow they are seeing through us…"

"Robot, they're just kids," Shannon said, quickly flashing a friendly mom-smile at an 8th grader who would not continue to pass on their right before they acknowledged his awful expression. As soon as he was behind her shoulder, she turned wide eyed and gave robot a look of, "Did you see that?" Suddenly all plan to suffix her former reassuring statement about them being 'harmless' was lost on the pale woman. Now looking as if she valued Robot's closeness to her, she clutched his arm, and they marched forward like a Victorian couple attempting to look nonchalant as they ran from alligators.

At first, Robot thought all of the kids were just gothic—as part of some New-Neux conformity movement. If such were the case, Moza might have fit right in here. But as soon as this thought had occurred to him, Robot from the first posting on the wall his eyes came across—the school dress code. No dresses, no skirts. No uniform equals an immediate call home.

"Polyneux with a dress code…" Robot remarked.

"It's surreal, all right," Shannon replied to a conclusion Robot had not made aloud, still scanning her surroundings repeatedly like a driver on the road, looking for the loose canon that would cause an accident. However, and as she may not admit it, but none of the students in particular struck her as any more threatening than any other. Thus she perceived the entiredy of this generation of Polyneux students to be equally untrustworthy.

Robot, too, was having an unbelievably hard time distinguishing for himself which children were the ones that Shannon's metal-loving daughter might get along with, and which she would most likely stay away from. When the data collecting unit walked the halls as a student, he remembered learning how easy it was to determine which kids he had something in common with, based on their apparel. Aside from a few incidents of betrayal, the system which which Robot had learned to associate friend or foe was nearly flawless. And as much as Robot Jones despised the idea of a person being judged by their looks alone, he had to admit that the system of visually identifying clicks was the one time where it was simply easier than thrusting oneself into the hazardous pool known as a junior high student body blind.

But when they all wore back, Robot didn't know who was a gangster, who was a nerd, who was a prep, who was a danger. Everybody dressed dark and wore even darker expressions. The site was not only bleak for the prospect of transferring Moza here for the security, but also had the effect of making Robot strangely depressed-and not for the reasons he was expecting he might feel that way.

As he walked on, he stopped upon noticing one student stopped at an open locker, sporting, on top of a standard black and gray uniform, a rainbow wristband. The familiarity of the symbol worked like a key in a lock to turn Robot's tense expression to that of a great, warm smile. "Way to show school spirit!" he shouted, without warning.

"Huh?" the kid looked up at him, in a throaty, non-menacing tone. .

Shannon tried to hold him by the shoulder, but it was too late: He slipped over to the locker where the boy stood, in a rather graceful stride brought about by his good mood, and made to offer his gloved-hand as an introduction."The rainbow. I would like to congratulate you on the courage you take to have to dawn the symbol onto your body-"

"Robot, stop-"

Shannon started, but the student already interrupted him. "Um, thanks…" the child said, gazing up at Robot and taking in his smile with the grain of salt, being his imposing height. "... Sir?"

"Robot Jones, to you, Junior High unit," the automaton said, fiercely shaking the young student's hand. "A piteous observation that it seems like your peers lack the enthusiasm that you do in sporting school spirit."

"School spirit?" said the student, flicking a forehead of long bangs out of his eyes. "Nah, man, I don't know what you're talking about, the rainbow stands for something else."

To so quickly wipe away the heartwarming smile on Robot's face, Shannon thought, ought to be considered criminal, if not done by a kid. "Isn't the rainbow the school colors?" asked the blissfully confused automaton.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said the kid with a shrug. "Our school colors are gray and black, man."

"Gray and black?"

"The color of the Mouse," Shannon explained, pointing above the lockers to their right. Robot turned to where she was pointing at, the big mural he had somehow missed that sat upon a once blank wall—

"Neux-Central—Home of the.. Rabid… Mouse?" Upon saying that last word, Robot turned to Shannon with a look that said he was desperately seeing a sign that his eyes were being untruthful.

What was wrong with Polyneux Rainbows? Furthermore, what was so wrong with Rainbows that they, at some point between he and Shannon's graduation and this moment, thought the 'Rabid Mouse' was a better replacement?

But beyond these questions, what he was most pressed to know about was that rainbow. But Before Robot could inquire further about it, the student had slammed thier locker shut and sprinted inside a conveniently close classroom.

"We should go talk to the staff," Shannon interrupted, "Before we get busted for trespassing."

"Affirmative," said Robot, sprinting ahead of Shannon in silence. When they were finally able to find the correct hallway leading to the main office, another thought had occurred to Robot that he simply could not contain.

"I dare say," the automaton said over his shoulder, "That that boy seemed rather unimpressed by us adult alumni."

"And by the fact that you're a robot," Shannon replied.

"That, too." Apparently, it had occurred to both of the that so much time had passed between the last time they entered the halls of Polyneux-or what remained of it, anyway- that it was nothing of a spectacle to behold a man made of metal on an average Tuesday. And while Robot did not miss frightening away endless strangers, he did, however, miss being the center of attention simply because he was a robot.

"And, FYI," Shannon said to him, before entering the office, "That wasn't a boy."

"Oh. Wait, what?"

Robot turned on his heel quickly before the doorway to the office, but by that time, the child with the rainbow bracelet was gone. He did, however, spot a little poster on the glass of the partially windowed doorway that explained the current use of the rainbow—LGBTQ Club. Meetings every Monday at 3PM.

Robot shook his head fervently as he stored this information away under a file for Junior High School information he, embarrassed, thought he had finished adding to long ago.

"It seems Shannon wasn't incorrect. Things have changed."

* * *

 _Originally Published January 8th, 2017_

 _Author's Note for the Story:_

Another passage I kind of vomited up last night. This all happened after I wondered what it would be like if Robot had a situation where he had to learn what the rainbow stood for in a 2010s society, in contrast to it being the mascot of his school back in the day. I know rainbows have been used as the symbol for LGBTQ for a few decades now, but in RJs time, I believe, the meaning of the rainbow was still used as a symbol of childhood innocence and playfulness, and people didn't always realize there was another association with it. That in mind, making THAT the mascot, and coupled with the initials of the school, PMS, there was definitely some hilariously naive people in charge of that school.

I just worry that comes across like I'm putting down LGBTQ for ruining the meaning of the rainbow, like iDubbbz made that joke about once. If anything negative is supposed to come through this, is that the school feels sterile and closer to a dystopian future by discarding the rainbow mascot, while not quite there yet. Let me know what you guys think.

 _Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?_ © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network


	8. Thanksgiving

The faint sound of clattering pans woke Moza from her already broken sleep. _Thanksgiving,_ she remembered groggily.

She'd wrestled to fall asleep that night-too much caffeine in a fourteen year old body will do that-only to be woken up by sounds trickling up from downstairs. At this point, she accepted that it just wasn't a night for sleeping. She pulled her head out from the cocoon of blankets and her eyes found the bright red numbers of the alarm clock, piercing in the dark room. 3:05 AM.

There was a lot of work to do today. Extended family was coming over at noon to celebrate. It was going to be the biggest meal they'd ever had on Thanksgiving, and the worst part was that she had no idea what to expect. She'd never had a traditional Thanksgiving that she could remember.

Thirsty, she stumbled to the door and let herself into the cool hallway, carpet-less metal stairs like ice on her feet. The bed had been warm, but the house was designed to be cool just below comfort for an average human. Moza was used to it, but a warm cup of coffee made it just a _little_ better.

More shocking than the temperature of the house, would think an intruder, would be what they encountered in the kitchen. But to Moza, who'd grown up around them all her life, seeing a six foot tall robot man, muttering cusses and cleaning the floor was exactly what she'd expected. Well, minus the cussing. "You owe a dollar to the swear jar."

Robot Jones spun around, a filthy rag in one hand and flour on his cheek. "Oh, Moza, did I wake you?" He looked guilty, but she didn't know if it was because she woke him up, or because he got caught swearing. It was strange to hear Robot curse, given she'd never heard him swear out loud until recently. He was a machine, not prone to venting his frustration the same way that humans did. And she'd heard there was actually a customary rule about robots letting their frustration show in front of humans. But Robot was the most humanoid robot Moza had ever known, and more likely to throw rules out the window than be as docile as robots built for servitude.

"I was just getting some water," she said. "Need a hand?"

"Oh, thank you Moza, but, it's fine. I've got it," he smiled, reaching for the dustpan. But she ignored him and grabbed some rags to mop up the liquid mess that was left after he was done sweeping the glass. "Thanks for that," he said sweetly. Moza was a rare human that acknowledged the automaton like that, offering to clean up his messes instead of expecting him to clean up theirs.

"Sure thing," she replied. She stood up and washed her hands in the sink and grabbed a glass from the cabinet, filling it from the dispenser on the fridge door. Robot leaned his back against the counter and sighed, making an expression that revealed how tired he was. He was also in his sweatpants and long sleeved navy sweatshirt version of night clothes, but she doubted that he'd slept at all that night, anyway. Though he was capable of staying awake for at least two days, it wasn't pleasant. Both he and Shannon worked late most nights, but he took the duty of preparing the meal without a word. No wonder he was dropping things. She wondered how many years he'd put himself through this for her family: for a meal that he himself wouldn't even enjoy.

Since their first Thanksgiving, the one in which a newborn Moza absorbed most of Shannon's time and energy, Robot had been a huge help preparing the event. While an exhausted Shannon spent half of the night feeding and changing the baby, Robot did most of the prep-work, including baking the turkey and watching it through the night. And only when the morning sun crept in through the windows did Shannon take over fine details of the operation while Robot curled up and slept the rest of the day. In the end, the humans on Shannon's side of the family were impressed with the feast, and while Robot didn't get any credit for his work-the humans assuming Robot served Shannon as part of robotic duties-Shannon it worth his while the night after in kisses and cuddles.

When Shannon was away on active duty, Robot managed to prepare a small, authentic meal for Moza at home when Thanksgiving Day came, even though she was the only one in the house that ate it. These lonely, awkward meals always filled Moza with resentment that politics had broke down the door, and ripped her family apart, so that she couldn't remember what a traditional Thanksgiving looked like. Or if there ever was one, for her.

This year was so much different.

With Robot and Shannon and all their children living under one roof, both their families, young and old, robots and humans, had decided to come together to celebrate. The union between this robot and this woman was a historical moment, and the press had turned them into minor celebrities. She didn't even want to think about what it was going to look like with so many robots and humans sat around one table. The things they would talk about. The awkwardness, arguments, the politics...

Under so much pressure, Moza somehow wasn't surprised to see Robot looking like a mess. "Are you sure you've got it?" she asked.

"You ought to get some more sleep, Moza, it's still so early." Robot then finished cleaning the mess on the floor, muttering, "Thankfully, that was just the cranberry sauce, and the statistics say 85.6 percent of humans hate that, anyway."

Moza looked around the kitchen, taking in another dozen messes. She couldn't believe her eyes. "Are you almost done?"

Robot groaned, pulling a piece of paper from his pajama pocket. "Negative, though I got through quite a large percentage." He flashed Moza the front of the paper, which had a list of the human relative's favorite Thanksgiving dishes, scrawled in black marker. Robot was trying to win over a lot of new in laws in one single meal.

"Geez, Robot, why don't you just wait for Sh-" Moza paused, and sighed. " _Mom_ to help you?" It was hard for her to get used to calling Shannon her mother. She'd been away for so long that when talking to Robot, it was just easier to call her by her first name. She hated to admit it, but there were times when Shannon didn't even feel like her mom. Not in the way it should feel.

Robot understood this. She could tell, not because of his sympathetic expression when she stumbled over her words, but because they were closer than a robot and human had any right to be. Fourteen years together made it so that they didn't have to explain everything to each other. It was kind of eerie. "She's stressed enough about the decorations, and the pies, and the press and the potential opportunity for them to barrel through our door tomorrow during the feast."

Moza rolled his eyes with a smirk. Of all the things to worry about, the paparazzi was not one of them. "Oh, it's a shame that we don't have a house with metal walls or-I don't know, a _laser touting grandfather security system_ or something."

The metal man chuckled, and there was a warmth in his artificial voice that anybody, not just Moza, would be able to hear. "Okay, I got your point." Robot pulled open the oven door and checked the thermometer. Though he didn't' know how food tasted or how to doctor it up, anybody with eyes could read a food thermometer and know if a turkey was done. Heating food was the one part of cooking that he was particularly good at. "There's no space in the oven until the turkey is done, so everything else will have to wait." He shut the door and calmly brushed off his clothes. "Up for some TV?"

They both sat on the couch in their pajamas. Robot sank into his end as Moza chomped on a bowl of popcorn one kernel at a time.

"This show is awful," the automaton remarked, his confusion and disgust fighting for equal expression on his face. "All these humans do is fight and party and complain."

"That's the point," Moza snickered, rolling a piece of the popcorn in her fingers before popping it in her mouth.

When another fight broke out, Robot gulped, cupping his can of oil with both hands. "Are you sure your mother allows you to watch this?"

"Robot, _everybody's_ mom watches this!"

Robot narrowed his eyebrows. "It's certainly not the MTV I remember..."

Before they knew it, the clock had sped up and dawn was creaking over the hills, and slippered footsteps could be heard through the halls.

"Well well well, what have we here?" Shannon said, gently making her presence known as she entered the living room. Shannon, like the other two, was still in her PJs, and her hair was all over the place. "I didn't know couch potatoes were on the menu today," Shannon said, folding her arms.

"Good timing," Moza said with a stretch. "Robot dozed off about a half hour ago." She glancing up from the other end of the couch, where Robot had buried himself under the couch's fleece throw blanket to keep the sunlight out.

A couple tinny footsteps later, a smaller figure in space-themed pajamas stumbled in from the dark of the hallway next to Shannon's feet. Little Robbie Jones shook the swear jar excitedly. "Moza said a bad word!"

"No, I didn't," Moza said, sleepily. If she were younger-rather, if she wasn't so tired, she'd let this turn into a game of 'he said-she said.' As it was, she shook her head tiredly.

"Then explain the extra dollar, smarty pants," the six year old robot said with a grin, shaking the quarters in the glass jar.

"Ask your father about a four letter word for animal leavings," Moza replied, stretching.

"Robot swore?" Shannon said, looking at his sleeping figure with surprise. She couldn't remember him ever swearing in front of her.

"You bet your sweet four quarters he did."

"Moza," Shannon started, with a lecturing tone. She got closer to Robot, eyes widening. "What happened to him? Why is he a mess?"

"He wants to make nice with your mom and dad and everybody," Moza said with a yawn. "You know, since we're all a family now, or… whatever…"

Shannon lifted the sheet off of his head gently and called his name. "Robot," she sang with a grin.

The automaton stirred and gazed up at her, first with surprise, then with affection. "Well… hello sunshine."

Shannon got in very close to his face, and just as Robbie made his 'gross, they're going to kiss' face, she said: "If there's a huge mess in the kitchen, I will kill you."

"Then dismantle me and put me out for the vultures," Robot said with a grin.

"Oh, Robot!" She threw the blanket back over his head with frustration. She quickly then wrestled with him, blinded, to show she wasn't upset at all. Robot removed the blanket and grinned back up at her. Moza and Robbie watched them critically, both wondering to themselves if growing up was a myth, inspired by old people to command authority from the youth.

"You should get some proper sleep. Same with you young lady, I need you to help me with the dessert later," said Shannon.

"I'll do it now," Moza said reluctantly while shutting the TV off with the remote.

"You're taking after him all right," Shannon rolled her eyes as Moza passed into the kitchen. "And you, mister," she pointed to Robot, "Off to bed."

"As you say, Mrs. Jones," he stood up and gave her a hug, squeezing her, feeling thankful for the opportunity just being there. To hold her.

It was this day, not Christmas, nor another holiday that marked the new beginning. Every christmas brought about time to reflect on the changes that had taken place that year. Every New Year's Day marked another year for them together, with the children, alive. Safe. But it was this day that was truly different. This was the first holiday that Robot Jones and Shannon Westerburg would celebrate together, live together, as man and wife. This was the first holiday they could officially, and proudly call their strange group of humans and robots a lawful family.

When Robot entered her bedroom—the one that he and Shannon now shared as husband and wife, the window in the corner spilled in light. The room was filled with a warm, peaceful glow, inviting Robot to plug in and crawl under the sheets that his beloved had just left in beautiful, messy heaps that reeked of her presence. As the sun feel over his face, like a kiss, as if nature was for once acknowledging his existence with love instead of contempt.

Downstairs, as Moza rubbed her eyes over the work in front of her, she finally felt whole. No matter what happened today, nothing could take away this feeling. This strange, strange family was hers. It was all hers. And nobody could take that away from her, or any of them, ever again.

* * *

 _Originally Published November 23rd, 2017_

 _Author's Note from the Story:_

Okay, so for those of you that read my last fanfic, this is going to seem REALLY contradictory to ideas I put there. But whereas that was NEW this is a pretty OLD fanfic that I just polished off, (note the Jersey Shore reference) because I really like how it came out, and I wanted to share it. And when will I ever find a proper time to post this? It's got my OCs in it, so it's obviously not something I can pledge to be an attempt at 'like-canon' writing.

This is an epilogue to an alternative version of the Robot Jones ending, where RJ and Shannon get married. I still have a lot of ideas for the NEW fanfiction I'm writing, but again, when the hell am I ever going to post this? I hope you've all had a good Thanksgiving and ate a ton of food, and all that good stuff!

 _Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?_ © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network


	9. Unwritten

Moza sighed, slamming the lid to her boombox open mid-song, and picking up the CD. After a moment of contemplation, looking at the label, she sent it sailing across her bedroom with a flick of her wrist. Alkaline Trio's latest album bounced off the wall with an unforgiving 'CLANK', and after spinning like a top, came to rest on the white shag carpet. "That was my last CD," Moza said in an tired exhale.

The fourteen year old turned to her sister, the robot, sitting crossed legged on the bed. She wasn't smiling either. But Sparrow Jones practically never did. Currently, the teenage robot was staring down at her lap, her face fixed with concentration. It was as if it had taken a moment for her to realize the music had stopped, because her head suddenly jerked upwards, meeting the human's gaze. "Oh..." she said, quietly.

They'd been listening to music only for about an hour that afternoon, but Moza had started this mission to find music that Sparrow liked over a month ago. Each member of the Jones family had done their part to try and make her feel welcome and belonging, and while it had been a rocky road, it finally seemed to work: Sparrow no longer wished to leave. Although it still didn't seem like she was entirely comfortable with where she was, yet.

In order to help assimilate the war-ruined robot into teenage life, Moza had taken it upon herself to introduce Sparrow to a number of aspects of the culture, from makeup to magazines, to MTV2 to making-nice with the popular girls, despite making fun of them behind their backs. The aspects of being a teenager seemed to sink in, but very slowly. It was like having a little sister just starting junior high, only Sparrow was technically older, just massively inexperienced. If it weren't for the fact that she excelled in her academics and had the ability to give a potential hallway threat a lethal wedgie, Sparrow might have not had the courage to get through that first difficult month of school. She was doing a lot better now, answering peer's questions without hostily, bringing comebacks to sarcastic remarks, and politely but cooly turning down offers to attend at-home study groups with boys, in which Moza informed her that there would actually be no studying involved.

Contradictions such as that continued to make Sparrow's head spin. But progress was being made. And the next logical step in the robot's path to assimilation, after learning the basics of social navigation in an American high school, was to find out what kinds of things she liked, and find other people at the school who liked those things. Finding friends with common interests had been Robot's very first goal when he began going to school, and while it worked out OK in the long run, it resulted in him jumping into the social pool with his proverbial hands tied behind his back. His daughter had the upper hand-at least she was better versed in telling apart sarcasm from an honest statement, not to mention thus far, she'd been a much more discriminating judge of character. Moza liked to think she helped a great deal in making Sparrow this way, but it was likely that being trained to defend her own life had left her naturally wary of people.

But this was where they'd reached a dead end. Common interests among teenagers implied excitement over one or multiple pieces or genres of entertainment. Heartbreaking romantic tragedies, dystopian YA fiction. Music...

Surely, there wasn't a sole on Earth who didn't enjoy _some_ sort of music. Even the grumpiest man on earth had to have a favorite song, something that made him content within the deepest part of his soul. And robots were not an exception. In fact, as Robot explained it, robots were usually quite fond of music as an auditory form of repetition. Most songs have an even number of beats, a formula that equates to a rhythm that is satisfying to both a human and machine's ear. Genres that robots tended to prefer involve music, like pop, rock, and even rap, due to the lyrical rhyming and consistent patterns the melody tends to follow. Whereas genres like free-form jazz and, surprisingly, electric club music, made a lot of robots uneasy and distracted.

Since music was an immediate form of entertainment that didn't require context from other media in order to be enjoyed, Moza thought she'd start there with Sparrow. But though she borrowed CD after CD from the library, and tediously went through every disk in her collection, she couldn't find anything that the robot actually enjoyed. Like watching TV and movies in the family room, Sparrow barely regarded the entertainment, spacing off in her head somewhere. Neither sports nor comedies nor documentaries could break this girl from her mental bubble. It was all just mindless images to her. And music fared no better. From Beethoven to The Beastie Boys, all of it went in one ear and out the other.

The only thing Moza could think to do at this point was focus on the kind of music that got herself hyped, and hoped that with enough time, Sparrow would just get into it too. And it was beginning to deeply frustrate her that alternative rock, which she was so passionate for, was just more noise for Sparrow.

Realizing she probably scratched her new CD, she grunted and rubbed her temples. "This is hopeless. If I can't find anything you like, what are a bunch of highschool girls who don't care about you going to introduce you to that I haven't thought about yet?"

Sparrow looked up from her lap suddenly. She nearly forgot the point of this mission was to find something she liked, so that she could broach a topic with potential friends. Biased though she might be about her skater park music, she was still trying to help. "I'm sorry," she said.

Moza met her gaze, looking suddenly guilty for the way she'd phrased her rant. "Don't be," she said with a shrug. "You can't help what you don't like." She folded her arms and rested her head on the computer desk behind her, looking up at the ceiling, while Sparrow occupied herself during those moments, following her gaze.

An awkward moment of silence followed, in which Sparrow almost missed the music for the fact that she had barely registered it was on. Just when it was becoming unbearable, a crackling noise broke up the tension in the room. "Girls, we're leaving in 10 minutes," said Robot's voice, static-filled and slightly distorted on the intercom. "Grab your jackets, we're already running late."

Moza groaned, leaning back in her chair and reaching for the switch on the square device next to her computer tower. "Alright, father-droid, we'll be down."

"Thank you," Robot responded politely. "And please don't call me that. You know I'm not fond of nicknames."

"Sure thing, Dad-a-tron Six Million," Moza replied, smiling to herself.

"Huh, Six _Million_?" Robot replied thoughtfully. "This old unit's not doing so bad."

Moza switched off her side of the intercom, stretched, and pushed herself to her feet. "Come on," she said to Sparrow, "Better hurry or else mom'll slam the car through the wall."

The girls arrived at the bottom of the stairs just in time to see Robbie arguing with his father over winter attire. "But I hate wearing this thing!" the little robot whined.

Robot zipped up Robbie's orange jacket with a look of well-practiced patience. "Come on, Robbie, your internal heater is broken, and I don't need your hardware to frost over."

"But it looks so _stupid_!" Robbie said. The instant Robot let go of his jacket, he shoved away from his father and spun around, looking horrified as the girls met his gaze from across the room.

Like Robot, Robbie normally didn't need a heavy jacket. His internal heater would keep him warm and his systems functioning at optimum efficiency, even during extended periods outside. But the heater had broke sometime in the early fall, which was why they were headed out today-to get Robbie a minor repair. And little robots tended to have a negative reaction to the cold, so Robot had bought Robbie a traditional children's winter jacket. It was bright as an orange, and almost as round as one. If not for his shiny glass head, from a distance, Robbie could pass for a stuffed animal.

Moza barely suppressed a snicker with the palm of her hand. "Nice one, Robbie. Remember when you used to make fun of me for my winter jacket?"

Robbie 'humphed' at his older sister, the human, now wearing a slimmer winter jacket that was flexible enough to put her hands on her hips. He turned away and attempted to fold his arms, but found that he couldn't properly cross them, as the arms were too heavily padded. He began waving his arms frustratedly with what little movement he was able to muster, and Robot laughed warmly as he scooped up his son in his arms. "Come on, Robbie, Shannon's got the car warmed up."

Robbie glared at his father, hating to be picked up like a toddler when he was already in the second grade, but said nothing as Robot hit the 'open' button for the front door on the wall, and the classic human house wooden door slowly opened by itself. He allowed his daughters to exit the house before he and Robbie did, and then shut the door with another tap of his elbow.

Outside, the neighborhood was buried under inches of pure, untouched snow. A little white dog in the nearby yard was creating a perfect crop circle with his paws, running and yapping back and forth from clockwise to counter clockwise, and back again. Half of the houses were already ornamented with Christmas lights, and the other half looked straight out of the back of a postcard.

Sparrow had been too busy taking in the scenery that she nearly jumped when she felt her feet slide on a wet spot on the front walk. Moza stopped and grabbed her hand. "Careful. Snow and ice, remember?"

Sparrow nodded. Even as she had gazed out of her window that morning and took in the neighborhood in the pretty vision setting they called 'winter', she forgot about the annoying thing they called 'ice.' It was hard to believe that there were parts of the world that could be almost as warm as the desert in the summer, and then turn to this six months later. Sparrow couldn't remember any of her winters from before she was taken away, and she couldn't get over how jarring it was to see all the demands of this kind of weather change, from humans (and Robbie) dawning heavy coats, to buying bags of salt, to switching to snow tires and stocking up on soup and hot chocolate. Even robots who spent time outside had to mind their functionality as the weather changed. It was one thing if you lived in an environment like this all year round, but how did they do this, every year?

The doors to a sleek, four door mini van slid open automatically, and upon helping Robbie up the step to the back seat, the rest of the family piled in-Robot and Shannon in the front, Sparrow and Robbie in the middle, and Moza stretching out in the bench in the far back.

As usual during these drives, Robot and Shannon carried out their own conversation, usually about little interesting things that happened at their jobs, or something more relevant, such as the astonishing realization that despite being adults now, their parents still managed to be so very embarrassing to them sometimes. Per usual as well, Robbie and Moza were on the verge of an argument, this time about Robbie's inability to move his arms and Moza taking advantage of this to reach over the middle seat and drape a backseat blanket over the front of his eyes, blinding him.

Sparrow, as usual, kept quiet, and locked her gaze out onto the passing streets.

The 'old people' van the parents purchased two months ago was fairly nice, with backseat warmers, storage compartments and even a DVD player. Robot had been particularly heartbroken about turning in his silver bachelor car to cover two-thirds of the cost of this thing. But now that they had a third child to drive with, they needed a bigger vehicle. It was unsettlingly comfortable, after having been exposed to the frigid weather outside. If not for Robbie and Moza's bickering, she could almost fall asleep here-

"DAAAAAAAD!" Robbie shouted at the top of his voice.

Shannon slammed on the break, just in time for the light at the intersection to turn red. She exchanged annoyed looks with Robot, making a silent acknowledgement about who's turn it was to parent. "Alright, Moza, enough is enough," he said in his sternest voice.

Moza, looking surprised, peered up from the back of the middle seat held up her hands in defense. "What? I stopped ages ago."

Robot turned around in his seat, eyes widening, and had to suppress a chuckle. Robbie's jacket hood had fallen up and over his head, explaining his blindness. He reached back behind the seat and yanked the hood back down. Robbie grumbled. "How much longer until we get there?"

"It's gonna be a long drive, Robbie," Shannon answered. "We're heading all the way to a shop in Mayner for your parts."

Robbie sighed, loudly, but had nothing to more to say. Because both JNZ and Lightoller were defunct now, the Jones had to find other means to take care of themselves. Most of the time it meant Robot was on his own for repairing himself and his family. But in cases like Robbie's, when a special part was required, Robot had to take him to a robotics tech-or in this case, a regular mechanic who had a background robotics as well.

Moza took this opportunity to put down her phone and lean over the middle seat. "Mom, can we put on 1.04. The River?"

"No way!" Robbie protested, "You always get to pick the station!"

"Not last time, Mr. 'Let's Listen to Radio Disney'!" Gross."

"Hey, I hate Hannah Montana," he said, sticking his tongue out. "But I like the other stuff. It makes me happy. Oh, let's listen to Christmas music!"

Moza groaned loudly, smacking her head against the seat. "Don't we get enough of that whenever we got to the store?"

"I still haven't heard 'I Want a Hippo for Christmas' yet!" Robbie said. "Dad!"

Shannon and Robot exchanged grimaces at the thought of being stuck in the car for over an hour with migraine inducing Christmas songs, though they were both a little sick of Moza's music, too. When they reached another red light, Shannon turned around. "Hang on: You two always get equal shots at the radio, but Sparrow never got to pick the station once."

"That's because she doesn't care," Moza said with a shrug, having had enough of the subject of Sparrow and music for today. "She just tunes out."

Something about that had struck a nerve, and Robot turned around, looking directly at his robot daughter determinedly. "Would you like to pick the station, Sparrow?"

Sparrow's eyelids fluttered as she came back to the present. "Uh... I don't know the stations to choose from."

"Just hit the 'seek' key," Shannon explained, pointing to one long bar among several silver keys on the center dashboard. "It'll flip through the local station one by one."

Gingerly, Sparrow reached forward and extended her hand between the driver and passenger's seats. She tapped the button and suddenly, the car was assaulted with loud mariachi music. She winced and took on a terribly pained expression as the loudness set off her trauma. Robot yelped, Moza covered her ears, and Robot and Shannon both reached for the volume at the same time and tuned it to an acceptable level, their hands brushing each other accidentally. Situation fixed, Shannon stroked his hand once before they pulled away.

Never having heard that kind of music before, her curiosity peaked. Sparrow reached forward and tapped 'seek' again. The next station had a commercial for used cars, with a man with a strangely Jersey accent for this area. After getting her 30 second fill of information from that, she hit the button again. The next station sounded like it was playing some 80s hairband rock. Robot instinctively reached forward to guard the dial so he could listen to this and test his memory of the band's name, but Shannon shook her head at him. Embarrassed, he pulled his hand away, and let Sparrow continue seeking. By the time they made it to the interstate, Sparrow had skipped passed orchestral music, blue grass, country, pop music on Radio Disney (to which Robbie protested when it was skipped-they were playing Alvin the Chimpmunks, and Sparrow didn't stay on it for longer than a second), and a dozen rock songs.

Moza wasn't the only one who was somewhat disappointed that Sparrow had no taste for rock and roll. The few times that they decided it was their turn to pick the station, Robot and Shannon always picked rock, though their specific song taste differed a little.

Jet, Robot's brother and the kid's uncle, also was a fan of rock. He explained that the intensity of it one of those things that soothed him from all the terrible things he'd seen. But rock songs tended to make Sparrow overwhelmed, if she noticed them at all, especially the heavier stuff that Moza's best friend, Jess, tended to listen to. There was even an unfortunate incident where, upon Jess coming over and bringing some of her own CDs nearly caused a disaster. The instrumental in Metallica's "One" sounding almost like a machine gun made Sparrow's anxiety skyrocket to the point that she nearly leaped out of the second story window. From that point on, Robot banned heavy metal in the house unless it was on headphones. Moza was annoyed, of course, but she cared enough about her sister to obey.

After skipping back to static-only stations in the unreachable 9.00s, Sparrow removed her finger from the dashboard, and slowly sat back down in her seat. A few moments of hesitation later, Shannon sighed and tapped the forward 'seek' until the first station with audible music came through. A popular hip hip song soon filled the car's background, and after what had just happened, nobody had the heart to reach over and change it-Well, Robbie might have, if he wasn't trapped in the puffy jacket.

Robot glanced back at Sparrow, something aching deep inside of him. He thought that if he just took her home, made her comfortable, did everything that a parent should have for their child, that she would come out of her shell. Was he wrong, or was this the best he could hope for? Robot recalled Moza telling her about Sparrow's growing comfort with using sarcasm and shooting down boys who hit on her. In that sense, she'd come a long way from the jittery, volatile girl when she was first enrolled in school. Her whole affect seemed to have calmed down a lot from what it used to be. But... she still was not acting at all like Beautrix, the daughter who was taken away from him to begin with. Instead of constantly asking questions, and bringing brightness to his life, she stayed quiet, dark and up against windows, like everywhere was still a prison.

Logical error of the heart: How could he miss someone so badly who was sitting there, right in the backseat? Had he known how reclusive she was going to be, he was starting to doubt if taking her away from saving lives was worth it. Over there, she was a hero, but here... she was empty. If there was ever a clear picture of a robot with an eliminated purpose, this was it.

He felt very guiltly just then. It was selfish to think of her that way. He had been so fortunate that things had worked out to where the whole family was together again, herself included. He just wished he knew of something that would bring out her personality.

They drove in silence for a while, Shannon staying focused on the road, and Robot himself spacing out, Moza listening to something on her MP3 since she didn't get her radio choice, and Robbie slowly attempting to get one arm free from the jacket.

The ride to the repair shop hadn't been as long as Shannon made it out to be. In the time it took Robbie to complete his careful mission, Robot was scooping him back up in his arms and into the warm, well heated garage.

Moza was the last to exit the van, with Sparrow needing to get out before Moza could crawl over the middle seat. Like the roads and lots they'd passed, this area wasn't shoveled yet, and dozens of sludge-ridden track marks ran on and off of the shop's property. And just like outside of the house, Sparrow had forgot how slippery wet snow could be. Moza watched on in incredible embarrassment as Sparrow took one step on the ground, extended her other, and as soon as she was out of the seat, proceeded to fall on her rear.

"Hey, you OK?!" Moza shouted.

Sparrow blinked, sitting in the muddy, dirty snow, looking baffled about what just happened. She became very aware of the fact that someone was laughing. Two people, actually. Sparrow turned her head slightly to the side, and saw two teenage girls of roughly the same height, standing outside of a truck parked across the lot. They looked like any of the girls that went to Sparrow's school, even though it was likely that she'd never seen them before. One of them made a show of pretending to fall like a cartoon character on ice, and then staying right on their feet, before an older man, presumably their father, ushered them inside the shop as well.

In the time it took Moza to crawl over the middle seat and join Sparrow at her side, she had started giggling, too. And it was seeing Moza's smirk that pushed Sparrow over the edge.

All of the sudden, the cruelties of the world came crashing down on her. The bloodshed and the ruined innocence of war was something that took years to harden to-to not have a reaction to. And less than six months home had done something to her. To where the simple embarrassment of a fall could devastate her to her core. How weak had she gotten?

But it wasn't just that. It was snow. Ice. Sludge. Wet concrete. It was winter. Christmas. Dawning coats. Family trips. A van. Bickering. Hoods falling over faces and passing the blame on siblings. It was hip hop and Radio Disney. It was having a favorite station to argue for. All these things that meant nothing to her. It was all alienating-everything was an inside joke that she was excluded from.

In war, her existence had meant something. But here, she as just an empty, useless robot, sitting wet in the snow. Like a discarded appliance that had missed the trashcan.

Some force deep within compelled her to close her eyes very tightly, and when they opened, her vision was blurry. She blinked rapidly trying to clear it, but the blurriness persisted. She had no idea what was happening until Moza leaned in close. "Wait, are you crying?" She twisted her body, looking to somewhere on the right. "Mom... mom! Come here!"

Sparrow heard the driver's side of the van slam, and a pair of agitated boot steps later, Shannon was with them, a mixture of concern and surprise washing over her face. "What happened?"

"She fell!" Moza said. "No duh, mom!"

"Moza, don't take that attitude with me. Why didn't you help her?"

"She got out before me! And how am I supposed to know she's gonna slip and fall taking the first step out?"

"Stop!" Sparrow suddenly shouted. "Just leave me alone!"

In a desperate urge to preserve whatever dignity she had left, she reached to her left and pressed her hands on the ground, reading to stand. But the patch was too slick, and Sparrow had moved too quickly. Before she'd made it off of her backside, she slipped and fell in the sludge sideways. A grunt of frustration escaped the robot's mouth as her hands and arms were now wet, too. None of it was helped by the blurriness of her vision, which wasn't going away. She sat there, not moving, for about ten seconds, all of them in total silence, before she extended an arm to her adoptive mother, and let her pull her to her feet.

Standing, Sparrow could still feel the slick ground under her feet, but with Shannon to lock arms with, she was soon walking on dry, virgin snow, her steps returning to a confident stride. But her head stayed low, and she noticed Shannon hadn't let go of her arm. Only letting go when they reached the entrance.

A rush of warmth wrapped around the robot as she, Shannon and Moza entered the office. Moza made a big deal of kicking her sneakers on the big black welcome carpet, but Sparrow didn't see a point in removing the snow from her feet. She was already cold and wet from the shoulders down.

Seated next to a desk, Robot and Robbie were talking with the shop owner, and the ladies walked in just in time to catch the tail end of an argument.

"But dad, it would look so cool!"

Robot sighed. "Robbie, you're not getting a red Power Ranger decal on your back. You're here for a repair, not a makeover."

Free from the puffy jacket at last, Robbie crossed his arms over his chest and glared at his father-jokingly, of course. The man behind the desk looked perfectly amused, as if nothing was uncanny about this father-son exchange that happened to be coming from a pair of robots. He looked at Robbie. "Be happy your daddy's looking out for you. I wish my pops was there to stop me when I got this baby:"

Lifting his arm off of the desk, the mechanic pushed up his sleeve and exposed a faded, brown, upside down cartoon character etched into his skin. Robot extended his eyes out a few inches for a better look, while Robbie turned his head a perfect ninety degrees sideways. "Is that supposed to be Taz?" the little robot asked, uncertainly.

"That was my best guess, too," the shop owner said, peering at the drawing on his own forearm.

Robbie looked suddenly nauseous, and leaned against his father's sleeve, dropping his arguments for a decal, as Robot grinned triumphantly. It was at that time that the men realized the women were present, and all turned in their direction.

"Well, if it isn't Robot's better half!" the shop owner cried out, laughing as he took Shannon's hand for a shake. "Good to see you again, hun."

Shannon flashed him one of her most awkward, and yet endearing smiles, and tried not to look bothered by having her hand shook around a lot harder than the man probably intended. "It's been a long time, Matt. Haven't been back here since Robot needed a tune up."

"I see you're keeping the old boy out of trouble," Matt said with a wink. "Marriage is looking mighty good on both you kids, I'll tell you what." His gaze switched to take in all of the family, but when his eyes fell on Sparrow, he frowned. "Your oldest having a bad day?"

Robot spun around in his seat, and he, too, only then noticed the sopping wet shebot. "What happened?"

Shannon was about to explain, but Sparrow demonstrated that she was perfectly capable of speaking for herself. "I slipped, that's all." She kept her eyes on the floor, not just because she was ashamed, but she couldn't stand to see the concern that laced Robot's face. She was still struggling with the idea of giving up a great deal of her independence so Robot and Shannon could truly attempt to parent her. She didn't need them to fuss about her on top of that. Especially not Robot. She didn't think she'd ever get over the guilt of not being the daughter Robot remembered. She didn't need him to worry about her.

Against Sparrow's wishes, Shannon grasped her arm again and squeezed. "That's what I'd been meaning to get to. You wouldn't happen to have a towel around here somewhere, would you, Matt?"

"That-that's not necessary, really," Sparrow started, feeling herself back away. "I have a water proof casing, I'll be fine."

"Nonsense," Matt insisted, standing up from his desk. "It's my fault that damn parking lot ain't shoveled yet. It's no good for a robot to be in wet clothes for that long, rust proof or not. You know, I think my daughter mentioned leaving a backup pair of gym clothes in her car," he said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "She's about your height. Let me ask her, she's around here, somewhere."

"Aw, thanks, Matt," Robot said with a sigh.

Sparrow's mouth fell open to protest, but the decision had been made, and it became a faint sigh instead. Besides, as the tears finally subsided and she got her clear vision back, she realized she was a lot more wet than she had previously thought. Her slush covered pants hung wet and heavy against her body, and she felt gross. The thought of getting something to change into didn't sound so bad.

Shannon approached Robot. "How long did he think the repair would take?"

"About an hour," Robot shrugged. "It's a fairly simple procedure."

"Think we'll get home in time to see America's Funniest?" Robbie asked.

Sparrow grimaced. That was that show with home videos, largely of people falling down. She could just picture her fall-the thing that finally unleashed the pain her heart had been building a wall from-captured on a security cam somewhere, then sent into the show for millions of home viewers to chuckle at for a few seconds, before rolling right into the next clip.

Moza noticed Sparrow's expression and frowned, almost like she could read her mind, but said nothing as she turned away. Soon, Matt returned with a clean, folded pair of sweats for Sparrow to change into. The shebot took the pants into the next room, which lead to the bathroom, and discarded her own, sopping wet pants. She dried her shirt off as much as she could with the paper towels in the restroom. They were stained, too, but not nearly as bad, and at least she was dry now.

Instead of returning to the family, however, Sparrow decided to take a seat in one of the foldable waiting chairs in the garage. It was colder here, and darker than Matt's office, but better in some ways. She needed time alone before she could face people again.

She could hear another mechanic was dealing with the mother of the girls that had laughed at Sparrow earlier in an office at the other end of the room, but aside from that and a few customer cars with their hoods popped open, the garage was empty. Must have been a slow day. Perfect for Robbie's appointment. Even better for Sparrow's nerves.

The most surprising thing of all, however, was that she hadn't even been aware of the music playing throughout the building until now. It was definitely louder here than in the office, and despite the echo of the garage, Sparrow heard it more clearly. Guitar strings. An gentle melody. A woman's voice.

 _...Staring at the blank page before you  
Open up the dirty windows  
Let the sun illuminate the words that you cannot find_  
 _Reaching for something in the distance  
So close, you can almost taste it... _

Teenage culture was still largely a mystery to Sparrow, and she didn't understand much about fashion either, but even she felt self conscious in the bright gray, athletic pants. One of the reasons she normally chose darker colors was to make herself feel less noticable. The more obscure, the more likely she could fade into the background, where she wouldn't be asked about where she'd been or the things she'd seen, or asked to join in on the here and now.

Maybe part of her anti-social behavior was her own fault.

"Customer or client?"

Sparrow looked up from the oil stained floor. A young woman was standing before her, hands on her hips. Listening to the music, Sparrow hadn't even heard her walk up. "Pardon?"

"Here to get your car fixed, or here to get _you_ fixed?" the female said with a smirk. Sparrow now saw that she was awfully young, perhaps in college, or even high school.

As if she was guilty over something-perhaps leaving the family-Sparrow stumbled to find words. "Oh. No. I'm not either-I'm... here with the Joneses." As she said the words, though, she knew they were inaccurate. She _was_ the Joneses-one of them, anyway. But boy, she didn't feel like it. But why bother explaining to a perfect stranger that she felt like an extra in her own family?

"Ah, I should've figured," the girl said, shaking her head. "Silly me." She stepped to the doorway and peeked into Matt's office. "Your little brother's cute."

Sparrow opened her mouth to correct the human, but was surprised when she had guessed correctly. Robbie _was_ her younger brother, despite the two of them having pretty much never bonded. She was hardly close with Moza after all Moza had worked to integrate Sparrow into society. "I suppose that is the common sentiment," Sparrow said. "Although I am a pretty poor judge of cute things."

The girl turned to look at Sparrow, looking amused at the way she talked. "Why aren't you out there with them?"

Sparrow grimaced. "I just... wanted to be alone." The shebot was hoping the human would take the excuse as a hint. But instead, she took it as an invitation to pull up the seat next to her. He hated how eager to be compassionate humans could be sometimes.

"I get that," the girl said, looking more serious. "My own family drives me crazy sometimes."

Sparrow looked away from her. "It isn't anything they did. I..." she struggled to find an excuse which didn't open the door to her whole backstory. "I've just had a rough day," she said, borrowing Matt's phrasing. "Slipped in the snow. Had to change."

The girl's eyes moved to Sparrow's legs. "I thought those pants looked familiar."

Sparrow blinked. She couldn't believe it had taken her this long to notice the girl's large bright, orange curly hair. The same color as the shop owner's. "Oh! You're-"

"Matt's daughter," the girl nodded. "That's OK. Not everybody gets it at first. Must be the glasses." She pushed the bridge of her glasses up her nose with her finger. Sparrow had to admit they did pull attention away from everything else. They were huge, almost as big as saucers, with a thick, black plastic frame. Beyond that, she had pale white skin, a long sleeved teal shirt, a black button-up corset that emphasized how skinny she was, sand colored uggs and black print disco-era pants that had colors to match the rest. Uggs weren't anything special. Sparrow saw every other girl at school wear them this time of year. It was the rest of her outfit that surprised her. Suddenly, she didn't feel so fashion-brain-dead if this girl was brave enough to pair this so-popular-its-invisible footware with the loud and outdated disco pants. "Oh, shoot," she said, suddenly. "I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Gwen," she said, extending her hand.

Sparrow eyed it hesitantly for a minute before grasping her hand and shaking it. "Sparrow."

Gwen furrowed her brow. "I'm sorry?"

Sparrow felt her face grow hot, dropping Gwen's hand. "That... is my name."

Suddenly, Sparrow became aware of the pants that _she_ herself was in. "I'm sorry," the robot started, pinching the fabric of the sweats in her fingers. "I didn't realize these were yours. You probably want them back-"

"Don't worry about it," the girl told her. "Keep them. They're just my back-up gym pants, and I've only got another semester left."

Something inside Sparrow felt crushed upon hearing this. "You're a senior."

Gwen looked surprised. "You're _not_ a senior?"

Sparrow shook her head. "Sophomore."

She didn't know why this girl being older disappointed her. It wasn't even like they'd gone to the same school. But as far as Sparrow understood how high school worked, upperclassmen didn't 'hang out' with underclassmen. Like it was an unspoken rule. In fact, upperclassmen barely acknowledged the underclassmen existed, except the few seniors that hazed them. It was like two different species coexisting in the same building, brushing shoulders every day, but never really speaking to each other. Sparrow didn't understand why it had to be this way. She just understood that it did. And now she dreaded the moment when Gwen would excuse herself and walk away.

But to Sparrow's surprise, Gwen just brushed the subject aside like it didn't even matter. "I hope this doesn't sound weird. It's just that, well, I haven't had a chance to really talk to a robot girl before," she said, frankly. "And you're really pretty, too."

At once, all of Sparrow's interest dropped, and her systems let out a 'whirr' of exhaustion. _Great. Here we go again._ Robot's upgrades to made her ready for civilian life included edits to her physical design that made her look more accurate to her physical age, as well as more appealing for socializing with humans. And this 'makeover' just so happened to make a dozen or so people remark about her 'prettiness.' The facial reconstruction was the most useless, superficial change to her design, and while at first it was nice to be recognized specifically as a female for the first time, she quickly grew to resent the compliments. How was she supposed to take Gwen seriously, now?

"Wow, you didn't like that at all," Gwen remarked, her face turning sour in what Sparrow realized was a reflection of her own face, reacting to the compliment. "I'm sorry, I guess?"

Sparrow was impressed that someone was paying that much attention to her. It wasn't often that a stranger could read into a robot's body language so quickly. "No, no, thank you for saying so, I guess." She clasped her hands to her face, trying to put her feelings into words. "I just think appearance is so unimportant. At least in the world I came from."

The girl looked away with a frown, and Sparrow still felt as though she'd said something wrong. But she couldn't lie-the girl had seen that talking about her looks made her uncomfortable. "Your parents like birds?"

"Huh?" Sparrow asked.

"I mean, your name..."

"Oh! No, my father didn't name me that. It's a kind of long story." She paused, tapping her claws together to an even rhythm-something that Robot _had_ given to Sparrow, a habit passed down by coding. "A kind of r _eally_ long story."

"How long is really long? I've got all day," Gwen explained, folding one leg over the other and knitting her fingers. "I just drop in on the weekends to keep dad company."

Sparrow had half a mind to ask what a seemingly normal teenager was doing wasting their time here on a Saturday. However, given her odd fashion sense and lack of hesitation when bombarding a nobody-robot-girl with a bunch of questions, Sparrow had to guess that Gwen didn't quite fit the definition of 'normal' in the general humans' eye, and perhaps didn't acquire the normal social calendar that went along with it. In fact, Sparrow had about a dozen questions to ask Gwen instead, but none more desperate than the one that had dug at her since practically entering the room. "What is this song?" she asked, her eyes flicking up to the ceiling where the tiny speakers were.

Gwen's eyes trailed up there, too, but her brow was knitted. " _That?_ It's 'Unwritten.' You know. Natasha Bedingfield? Was all over the radio a while back?"

But instead of nodding with the jogging of a recently forgot memory, Sparrow just shrugged. Little did Gwen know that Sparrow hadn't even _been_ here before the start of this year. This was her first time ever hearing the song.

"You've got to be kidding," Gwen said, looking awed. " _Girl,_ where have you _been_ for the past three years?!"

Sparrow looked her dead in the eye, the syllables finally tumbling out of her mouth like packing peanuts out of a knocked over box. "Delivering supplies to civilians in Iran."

Gwen's smile was long gone. "If that's a joke, it's not funny."

"I don't joke," Sparrow said, still tapping her fingers on her lab, but a lot quieter this time. "I'm not very good at it, anyway. I'm just getting the hang of sarcasm."

"Jesus," Gwen exhaled, horror creeping into the disbelief on her face. "You're serious?"

But instead of replying, Sparrow became silent, eyes flicking back up to the speakers again as she focused on the music again. "What is that song that is playing now?"

Gwen blinked again. "Oh... um... 'Put your Records On,' I think. Yeah. Corinne Bae or something. You know, if it's annoying, I can change the station-"

"No, no!" Sparrow said, flailing her hands. "Don't! I... " The robot's mind whirred, trying to find the words to describe how she was feeling. "I like it." She looked awestruck as she spoke.

Gwen's smile returned, and it was then for the first time that Sparrow noticed the line of braces on her teeth. Unlike other humans, the dental apparatus didn't look jarring. In fact, it just seemed to fit the rest of her. "Well, that's a relief. For a second there, I thought it was making you feel worse."

"Actually," Sparrow said thoughtfully, "It's the best music I've heard in... a while, anyway." The robot didn't know how to explain yet that she couldn't remember if she enjoyed any music before her memory as Trixie was wiped, and what music Trixie enjoyed. But the fact was that Trixie was gone, and her opinion didn't matter anymore. Sparrow, however, enjoyed what she was hearing. She gazed at Gwen with intent. "Who picked it out?"

"I did," Gwen shrugged with a grin. "Dad lets me change the station when I come over. Usually he's got some 80s rock on or something-you know how dads are."

Sparrow nodded, amazed that she knew exactly what Gwen was talking about. "And they don't make you pay Christmas music?"

"Who?"

Sparrow stopped, and rubbed her chin. "I... don't know. It just seems like a rule that all business must play repetitive holiday themed music 30 days before Christmas."

Gwen laughed. "No way! If that was the case, every time I went anywhere, I'd have to wear earplugs. Christmas music can be fun, but it gets annoying fast for a lot of people. Music shouldn't pressure you to feel a certain way, especially during this time of year, when everybody's already so stressed out. Which is why I usually pick something that's easy to fade into the background."

Sparrow would have liked to point out that this kind of music was the only kind that hadn't faded to the background for her, but instead, she found herself asking another question. "What station is this? I'd like to hear more of it when I get home."

"Oh, this is XM," Gwen explained, "It's OK, but it gets old fast, so I'm always changing the station. And it doesn't play some of the best stuff-wait!" She stopped, looking excited. "If you like this, you gotta hear Regina Spector. Come on, my MP3's in the other room."

Ushering Sparrow up out of her seat, Gwen lead her across the garage to the office where the music was controlled. By instruction, Sparrow was supposed to accept offers of social interaction with teenagers, as part of her mission to assimilate. This had lead to some grueling afternoons where Sparrow was obligated to sit in on some random after school clubs. The students that had asked her to attend some of these clubs were only trying to make her feel welcome, but all except for the social activist club felt like a waste of her time. And even the activist club honesty felt like too much of a joke for Sparrow, who'd seen the worst situations humanity could inflict upon each other, to take seriously.

But the robot found that she didn't mind this Gwen girl's offer to share some of her music. For almost an hour, the teens hovered around Gwen's portable music player, one headphone each. They went through song after song that, despite Moza's efforts to expose the robot to all music she could think of, that Sparrow had never heard before. There were indie male artists with acoustic guitars, a Celtic women's choir, and a bunch of instrumental soundtracks to movies from the '60s and '70s that Sparrow had never seen.

But by far, Sparrow's favorite discovery were the artists who played the piano. Sparrow had heard some piano when Moza was showing her music, but usually it was in classical orchestras where the instrument was drowned out by other instruments, or in solo pieces that were just too intense. But the kind of piano that Gwen liked, apparently, was in slower, simpler songs that were a lot more soothing. It took her a while, but eventually, Sparrow decided that the piano songs were the ones that spoke the most to her. And Gwen must have nailed down Sparrow's taste pretty quickly, because her favorite artist of all of them turned out to be Regina Spector. She wasn't even sure why the particular song that kept playing in her head, "The Calculation," did so. The lyrics had even less to deal with her and her experiences than the other two songs that had come on over the radio that she'd liked earlier. Though there was the inevitability later on of a certain cat-shirt wearing somebody making the humorous observation that the song dealt with a homemade computer, and thus a robot could relate.

Sparrow was enjoying herself so much that she was surprised when Gwen's father, carrying a fixed-up Robbie, came into the room. "I was wondering where you'd been, girl!" Matt said to his daughter.

"Just plotting the end of the world, dad," Gwen said, rolling her eyes. "How'd the repair go?"

"Great!" Robbie answered for himself, as Matt set him down on the floor. Free of his jacket, he ran around the room in circles. "No more stupid jacket! No more stupid jacket!"

Matt grinned as he watched the young robot run circles around his back office. "Gee, I feel like a doctor or something. I wish my clients got this excited all the time."

"I think the last thing we need are cars that can talk," Gwen said.

"You know what I could use, though," Matt said, rubbing the back of his head. "A six pack of soda and a nice hot dog."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "Aw, dad, do I gotta?"

"I'll throw you a couple bucks your way, if you do."

"I guess I could use some chips." Gwen turned to the female robot. "Wanna come with me? It'll make the ride faster."

Sparrow hadn't even realized she'd been smiling until she felt the return of a frown on her face. "Oh... I would like to, but I should get back with my..." she looked at Robbie, running around in circles on the floor. "...family."

The human girl nodded. "Well, alright. You have a phone, right?" Gwen asked. "Let me know your number so we can text sometime."

Sparrow's frown sagged lower. "I don't carry a cell phone. Not yet, anyway. But," she ejected a tiny slip of paper from her mouth. "This is my house number."

Gwen snatched it up without a second of hesitation. "Awesome! Catch you later, then."

And Sparrow watched her bob out of the room, a strange feeling of satisfaction came over her. Like finding the puzzle piece that fit, after an hour of searching. Something was finally starting to make sense, although she couldn't quite articulate it.

When Sparrow and Matt rejoined the rest of the family just outside the door from Matt's office, Robbie ran straight for the tallest mountain of snow he could find, and threw himself onto it. The top of the snow melted, and when he peeled himself up, left a perfect imprint of the little robot, bolts and all.

Shannon and Robot wrapped up their conversation with Matt, thanking him again for the speedy repair, while keeping an eye on the little automaton that was making their neighbor's dog back home look calm, as he ran around the yard, celebrating his freedom from the imprisoning puffy jacket.

Sparrow's focused shifted from her little brother, to Gwen, who pulled a second hand-looking sedan out of the parking lot, and onto the road to the nearest convenience store. The female robot waved at her just before she disappeared down the road and out of sight. And it was now that Moza, who had wandered up beside her, finally spoke up. "Hey, listen, I'm sorry."

Sparrow snapped out of her reverie, and turned to her. "Sorry for... what exactly?"

"Like, what I said in the car. About you tuning out. I didn't mean it."

"You don't have to apologize." After a quiet pause. Sparrow worked up the nerve to break her eyes from the floor to Moza. "I noticed you didn't apologize for snickering at my fall, though."

"Well, no," Moza explained. "That was hilarious, and I'm not sorry for it."

The surprise of that response make Sparrow snort, and she shook her head. Moza might not know what music Sparrow liked, but she was starting to figure out what kinds of things to say to the hardened shebot to unlock a little smile. "My life is a mess, and that was just the hood ornament on top of it all."

"It'll get better," Moza told her, elbowing her in the shoulder. "Look, you've already made a friend."

Sparrow watched as Moza pointed out to the tire tracks of Gwen's car leaving Matt's parking lot.

 _Friend,_ her databases defined: _A person, man or machine, from which one can ally with. Usually discovered among common interest during interface. See 'companion.'  
_  
Sparrow watched skeptically as the late afternoon wind kick glittering snowflakes up into the air, and already starting to bury the car tracks. "We'll see."

As it turned out, Sparrow's doubts had been in vain.

Gwen had dialed the Jones household the next day, looking to talk to the teenage robot. At first, Sparrow was nervous. Never in her life, that she could remember, was she particularly verbose, and she didn't think she'd be much company over the phone. However, talking with Gwen just came naturally. It wasn't like the girl had been through the same experiences Sparrow had, or that she'd been through a similar level of trauma at some point in her life. For some reason, Gwen just made herself relatable. Though the human by far did most of the talking, she was a good listener when she needed to be, and she had a way of articulating her optimistic replies that didn't sound condescending to Sparrow.

Soon, Sparrow was taking car rides with Gwen to the mall, and visiting her house to watch TV, and do small, stress-relieving activities, like baking cookies, and playing board games. Though she was not navy, Sparrow had a liking for the thinking involved in _Battleship,_ dubbing it a much faster, less boring game of Chess-a classic, heavy strategy-based game that most Type B robots had a knack for.

Once Sparrow had grown comfortable spending one on one time with the human, Gwen offered to take Sparrow out for coffee. Once again, Sparrow's anxiety kicked in at the first mention of this outing. She didn't know why, either. She'd faced life-threatening danger and spat in its face. Why did something as simple as ordering a beverage at a store intimidate her?

When the time came, Gwen made it even more simple for Sparrow than she'd expected, by ordering the drinks and bringing it to the table. It was crowded at the coffeehouse, and Sparrow felt herself shrinking back into the booth for every unfamiliar voice that spiked above a whisper. Just when she felt like she'd disappear into her thoughts and into the fabric, there was Gwen, handing Sparrow a small, hot cup of tea. She couldn't consume too much of it, though the insane amount of honey in it did taste good. And once they were chatting, Sparrow felt herself slowly surface again. And for every intimidating social activity Gwen would suggest after, the robot felt like she was becoming more real.

Of course, the thing they bonded over the most was music. Though she practically sobbed over the "mainstream" music that Sparrow had acquired a taste for, after having exposed her to all the kinds of rock music she herself liked, Moza let Sparrow have her old iPod. The shebot then loaded it with every new soothing song Gwen introduced her to. Even when she wasn't listening to it, she found herself humming tunes that got her through the most stressful parts of her day-going to school, taking these 'final exams' that every high schooler dreaded, and running to escape before being crushed by the hundreds of bodies flooding out of the doors for holiday break.

It was strange how Gwen had effected her. Even though they went to different schools miles away, Sparrow just imagined that they were running out of the doors together, and that made the experience less like a war flashback and... almost fun?

Once school was over, Gwen and Sparrow spent even more time together. Now it was Gwen's turn to come over to the Jones house. When she did, she brought over an early Christmas gift for Sparrow-an iPod dock. Now Sparrow could listen to music in her room without putting on headphones. At once, the gray, poster-less room seemed to come alive. And for the very first time, the room Sparrow slept in felt truly like her own.

And Sparrow herself wasn't the only one to notice the transformation. Though the music wasn't being played at nearly the ear-shattering volume that Moza's music tended to, Robot and Shannon both paused when passing Sparrow's room. It was unusual for any kind of noise to be coming from behind that door, and it made the man-bot and woman exchange surprised expressions.

For as long as Sparrow had been home, the parents had to constantly remind themselves that someone occupied that room. Sparrow's tendency for being quiet made herself something of a ghost in the house when she was just in her room, although Moza was the only one blunt enough to mention it out loud. When her friend was around, however, Sparrow almost became a different person. Robot came to a screeching halt and nearly dropped his basket of laundry when he thought he heard her _laugh._

That said, when Gwen went back home, Sparrow returned to her old self. She opened another textbook and shut the music player off. She was serious again.

It was confusing, and frustrating, especially for Robot. He remembered his human friends having a profound impact on his personality as well. When he was out and around them, he used more slang, less contractions, and in general, became louder. But even after Robot went back home at the end of those days, his parents noticed that his mild mannered personality slowly started to fall away. Being around teenagers had made him more like a teenager than he could have ever been if he'd stayed sheltered, and he truly believed that his friends had helped shape him into the young man that he became.

With Sparrow, however, she retreated to the safety of her quiet almost non-existence as soon as Gwen went home. It was as if Sparrow's personality went out the door with the other girl.

Robot wished he could make it stay.

One day when the kids were all out, Robot was cleaning up their rooms. In Sparrow's, he found her iPod was in the dock, and the screen was on. Curious, he grasped it in his claw and pulled it from the doc, checking out the name of the track Sparrow had left it on.

Suddenly, he had an idea.

* * *

The 25th of December began for Sparrow like any other morning.

Back when she was in the middle east, soldiers didn't really get the luxury of enjoying the holiday, and the robots who served them were especially excluded from any small level of celebration that might go on. As such, Sparrow regarded the day like any other, even during her very first Christmas back home, last year. Though she got clothes, books, and a dozen small tokens of affection from the robot and human pair who claimed to be her parents, she wasn't as outwardly pleased as she thought she should have been. She was grateful, that much was certain, but still didn't quite feel like she really belonged here, so the gifts felt less like hers, and more like they belonged to a girl whose identity she'd been forced to assume. Beautrix. This mysterious other version of herself that had died when Sparrow was born. She almost wish she could have met the girl Beautrix would have turned out to be at this age. Maybe Sparrow would have a better idea of who she herself was supposed to be.

The calendar behind Sparrow's eyes read in plain, white font: December 25th, with a smaller font caption at the bottom that read: Christmas Day. All day. She blinked away the date as she lay in bed.

And that's when she noticed the time. The clock in her head read 5:22 am. Almost two hours before her alarm was set to go off.

What had woke her up?

Usually an auditory disturbance was enough to do the trick, but she didn't remember hearing anything. She chalked it up to a truck backfiring somewhere down the street, and rolled over in bed with a grunt. Since being put back on a regular sleep routine, she was as annoyed as any human would be at waking up before she had to.

And then, she heard it. So familiar, she almost chalked it up to her imagination.

Music.

She opened her eyes and sat up in bed. It was faint, the slightest sound waves just trickling into the room, but once she heard it, she was certain of what it was.

In the dark of her room, Sparrow's eyes landed on her iPod dock. The music player was gone. She flung the covers back, feet landing without slippers on the cool, carpet-less floor. Had Moza taken it back? The shebot's rapidly-waking mind ran through a dozen scenarios as she pushed open the door, rushed to the end of the hallway, and listened.

The music, and its source, was undeniable now. Standing at the top of the staircase, she could make out the imperfect notes of a song being played live in the living room, trickling into the den. The piano, a narrow piece of furniture which, up until that point, Sparrow assumed was just a decorative piece to fit the human half of the house's esthetic and prop up a number of dusty knick knacks, was being used for the purpose for which it was built.

 _Christmas is a time for miracles,_ said the voice of an actress on a sappy TV special Sparrow had been obligated to watch with the family some nights ago. For whatever reason, that phrase surfaced in her head just then.

 _It couldn't be._ Sparrow's body tensed up. But the song, the notes, it sounded just like...

Like the artist playing live.

Sparrow lost all inhibitions, running down the staircase faster and lighter on her feet than a human her same size, her bare feet making a faint rapid 'ting' on the steps. She zoomed through the den and up to the opening of the living room. Peering inside, she couldn't believe her eyes.

Inside the dimly lit room, the piano's key-cover was tossed aside, revealing a row of bright ivory keys that were being played, as if they were every day. But Sparrow wasn't used to the sound of such an instrument in person, and the piano's booming live sound took her aback.

But it was who was sitting on the well-polished bench and hitting those keys that really staggered her.

Not only was it not a woman miraculously playing one of her most famous songs on the piano in the Jones' living room, but the figure wasn't even human. A familiar, six and a half foot man of metal was near perfectly belting out the cheery melody, engraved so deeply into Sparrow's mind. For a while, she watched him with his back to her, his back arched slightly, his form fitting burgundy robe tight at the elbows. Every once in a while, he'd pause for a fraction of a second, as if making sure that he was playing the song correctly, than continue on without losing tempo.

She was going to wait until the song was over, but before long, she was compelled to join him at his side, sliding without a startle onto the free side of the bench. She wanted to watch his claws as they fluttered over the keys, slowing like a bird approaching a rest-worthy branch as he hit the last notes. And then the song was over, and the two robots sat in silence for what felt like hours.

Until Sparrow found her voice. "That was... beautiful," she said, hesitantly. The shebot remembered telling Gwen that robots weren't very good judges of pretty things. But Sparrow knew that nowhere else on earth, spare a live concert with the artist herself, was she ever going to hear a closer rendition of "The Calculation" on a live piano. That qualified as pretty in her book.

Systems whirring, joints squeaking, the middle age Robot Jones turned and looked at his daughter, a warm grin on his unbuffered face. "You think so?"

Sparrow nodded, her pupils small, her face in awe. "Regina Spector... how? How did... when did you decide...?" Sparrow sighed. There were so many questions on her mind, and it wasn't even 6am yet. She looked the adult robot in the eyes. "Why?"

Robot held his claws over the keys without touching them, hitting the air above them in line with the song, having started over in his head. Whatever had compelled him to go through the effort of learning the song, he was enjoying it a lot. "Well, I didn't really know what to get you for Christmas." Carefully, he lowered his hands to his sides. "I remember the disappointment on your face when all you got was some books and clothes last year."

Hearing this, Sparrow felt a rush of guilt. "Oh... I didn't mean to be ungrateful," she said, awkwardly.

"I don't think you were," Robot told her. "It took me a while to figure it out what I was doing wrong, but I think I've done it." He looked at her seriously. "All this time, I've been expecting a different person to come out of you. Someone who will act like the everything she's experienced when she was away never happened. Someone who's just a normal, average, teenager." His expression became incredibly apologetic. "I was trying to get Beatrix back. Even if I couldn't admit to myself that that is what I was doing, that's what my heart was holding out for." He looked away from Sparrow, shamefully. "I don't know how I could expect you to love me back, given that my love for you must appear very conditional."

"I-I don't think that at all!" Sparrow said, her voice high and wraught with more emotion than Robot had ever remembered hearing from her. "You never made me feel like you were waiting on someone else to appear. Frankly," she rubbed her shoulder, "sometimes I wonder what Beautrix would have been like, if she was still here."

"But, she's not," Robot said, grasping her shoulders. "And you are. And you are all that I care about."

Sparrow's eyes pupils wobbled. She remembered what this felt like, this aching of waking emotions after years of having trained them to stay down. She remembered feeling this way when she'd been intent on going back into military service, and Robot had cried over over her decision. Ultimately, a desire deep down inside her to be that daughter that was worth so much parental loyalty compelled her enough to put off leaving. She had always told herself that if this didn't work out-if she just was never going to play the part of the normal American teenager, she always had a way out. A way back to a greater purpose. Now, it was over a year later, and Sparrow couldn't ever see herself trade in this life. Maybe it was selfish, but she cared about her own existence, now. And she cared about her family, and the sacrifices they made to find her.

In reality, she treasured every useless skirt and boring book she received on the holidays, because it was more than she'd ever gotten before.

But this... This song. This token of consideration. It was something else entirely.

Again, she felt the strange sensation behind her eyes, like she'd fallen in Matt's parking lot again. But this time, it was in the form of joy. She managed to hold her eyelids tight long enough to force the tears back. She still wasn't comfortable with showing emotion if she didn't have to, even if all her war programming to hide her weaknesses was gone now.

To distract herself, she took her eyes off Robot, and onto the keys. "You learned the piano just to do that, for me?"

Robot grinned. "Well, your grandmother made me learn the piano when I was a little younger than you are right now, so I wasn't all that new to it. Though it's been quite a while."

Sparrow looked at him thoughtfully. "I hadn't known that."

"Oh, that reminds me," Robot said, reaching into his pocket, and producing Sparrow's iPod. He gently pressed it into Sparrow's open palm. "Forgive me for intruding on your personal space, but we haven't spoken much since your new friend started coming over, and I thought maybe she was showing you some tunes you were really interested in."

Sparrow rested the skinny iPod on the side of the piano silently. It occurred to her just then that there were many things about her father, her creator, and her technological predecessor, that she didn't know about. Often when invited to discuss things at the dinner table, she found her mouth staying shut, unable to think of anything worthy to say. But Sparrow admitted there was something awing about, after 14 years of being a random army robot, discovering who her father was, and that he was a robot to boot. There was so much to learn about herself that she could learn from him alone. After all, they were built for roughly the same purpose: Integrating with humans. She wondered what it must have been like, to be the first of his kind, to bond with humans on a personal level unlike any robot that had ever come before him. Surely, if Sparrow had doubts about her ability to assimilate to civilian life, he would have to had encountered doubts about his ability to do the very thing he ended up doing so well.

She looked down at her own hands, wondering if a sound so beautiful as she had just heard could possibly be made by the same hands that had been soaked in soldier's blood.

She regarded the warm spot in this half robot, half human household, and supposed that greater miracles had happened. "Do you suppose that you could teach me?" Sparrow asked.

"Teach you what?" Robot asked, puzzled. "To... play piano?"

"Yes!" Sparrow said in a hushed cry, brushing the tops of the keys with her fingers. "This is the most beautiful instrument I've ever heard." She struggled for words again to describe how she was feeling. "I... want to play the song myself."

Robot rolled his eyes playfully. "Well, OK, but we'd better start off with the basics first. The only thing more rusty in this house than my gears is my piano skills, so-"

The automaton flipped open the dusty music book on the top of the piano to the first page and began explaining to his attentive student what the musical notes stood for.

* * *

 _Originally Published December_ _25th, 2018_

 _Author's Note from the Story:_

I wanted to get this cleaned up but it's a Christmas time fic, so better post it now.

So a few years ago I posted the Thanksgiving Moza fic, and I got a LOT of great feedback on it (which I'm still incredibly thankful for, thanks to everybody who comments on my writing, compliment or criticism *cries*), and it made me really excited, especially since I wrote most of that thing ages ago. I didn't think much about it, but seeing positive reactions to the characters and the way I wrote RJ and Shannon (I guess?) made me want to continue writing current-day-set RJ fics. This time around, since I didn't even acknowledge the more tragic of the Jones children in that story, here's a fic that's dedicated entirely to Sparrow, and her continuing struggle to conform to home life after the war, and accepting the role of this normal girl she was always meant to have.

Hope you like it, and everybody have a Happy Holiday season and a Happy New Year!

 _Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?_ © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network

The non canon characters belong to meh.


End file.
